Buffalo This

Stuff old people like (#6)

2008-11-14T17:26:00.000-08:00

At some point in everyone's life, unless they die an untimely and tragic death, they get old. But how old is old? 70, 40, 25? Can you really put a number on it? How does one know when one is old?

One answer that most people seem to agree on is that when you're interested in things that old people are interested in, then you're old. But what are old people interested in? As always, I am here with the answer. Part 6 of our series, "Stuff _____ like" lists a few things that old people consider to be "the cat's pajamas."

Antiques
Ever walk into an antique store and realize the youngest person in there makes your old, haggard mother look like a spring chicken? That's because antiques are a thing of the past. Nobody cares about a little framed picture of your great-great grandma working on a spinning wheel anymore, and if anyone actually buys that old piece of crap, they probably just want to use it as a vintage beer coaster. If you're into antiques, chances are you are an antique yourself.

The modern-day replacement for antiques is the act of antiquing, which means throwing a large quantity of flour on an unexpecting person. If you are the victim of an act of antiquing, do not look at it as a cruel prank, but instead look at it as a thoughtful homage to past generations.

For only a few hundred dollars of your hard-earned money, you can be the proud owner of a whole cart full of this useless old crap!

CDs
See above. In today's world, compact discs are like ancient Egyptian pottery or ancient Greek sculpture: good for showing your friends you are cultured and knowledgeable about history, but otherwise completely and utterly useless. If you don't have an iPod by now, you probably don't have much time to listen to music anyway with your busy schedule of bingo, shuffleboard, bridge, and AARP/VFW/Elks Lodge meetings. CDs are so 2002.

John McCain
Hanging around old people will make you look old. John McCain is very, very old. If you hang out with him, talk about him, or campaign for him, people will think that you are also very old. Case in point: Sarah Palin is 44 years old, or as most people would refer to it, "middle aged." A survey released in early 2008 before she was chosen to be McCain's running mate showed that the average American thought she was 41 years old. A survey released in October 2008, however, showed that the average American thought that Palin was 137.

NOTE: 100% of the 2% of 60-and-over voters who voted for Obama answered either "Yes" or "Eh? What did you say, sonny?" to the follow-up question, "Are you in denial about the fact that you are old?"

Handkerchiefs
Nobody carries a handkerchief around anymore. If you do, or if you even use the word "handkerchief" for any reason other than to mock someone else's antiquity, you will appear to be a dinosaur.

Anything having to do with the show "Happy Days"
If you still watch or refer to anything having to do with this show, you probably also have some great stories to tell about hunting woolly mammoths as a young lad. News flash: Henry Winkler (the guy who played "The Fonz") is 63. Hell, he was old when he starred in "The Waterboy," and that came out over 10 years ago. Imitating or quoting The Fonz in any way, even something as simple as snapping your fingers while saying "Aaaay!" will reveal you as the geezer that you are to all observers.

"'Aaaay!' sonny! Could you hand me my handkerchief? It fell on the floor and I can't reach it because of my bad back!"

Neil Young
This is a tricky one. Judging by his name, you would never suspect that Neil Young is actually old. But the truth is that he is really old, as in 63 years old, or the same age as Henry Winkler. He's also Canadian. Do not make the mistake of thinking that you can judge a person by his or her last name. Is Jack Black black? Is Barry White white? Does Britney Spears stab people with long, pointed objects? Does Tiger Woods use woods (a type of golf club)? Is Martin Short short? Ok, never mind those last two.

"Rockin' in the Free World"? Maybe in 1967. Nowadays the only rockin' "Neil OLD" does is in a chair on his front porch.

Revised presidential projection

2008-11-06T20:05:00.000-08:00

Oops. Looks like we were a bit premature in calling Bob Barr the next U.S. President. Apparently it seems that U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) has won the election. In an extremely close race, Obama has defeated Barr in the popular vote, 52.4% to 0.4%, as well as in the electoral vote, 364 to 0.

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama
(who we now project will narrowly defeat Bob Barr)

The key outcome of this election is a shift in power from George W. Bush of the Dumb Redneck Party to Barack Obama of the Radical Communist Hippie Party. Bob Barr, the candidate supported by the Good Presidents Party, will apparently have to wait until 2012 to run again.

What exactly happened to cause this unexpected outcome, you may ask? One word: COMPLACENCY. Going into election, most polls predicted that Bob Barr would garner (the verb, not Jennifer) between 85% and 90% of the national popular vote. However, when people actually went to the polls, a strange thing that historians may someday refer to as "The Barr Effect" took place: Everyone assumed that everyone else was going to vote for Bob Barr, so they tried to get cute. At this point, approximately 99% of voters thought one of the following thoughts: "My vote doesn't matter anyway, so wouldn't it be awesome if I voted for that guy whose middle name is Hussein who supposedly pals around with terrorists?" or "Dude, everyone else is already voting for Barr, but it would be pretty sweet if I voted for that old geezer who called his wife a trollop that one time." or "Screw it, all of these candidates suck. I'm just going to write-in Ronald McDonald again."

And at this fateful moment, a tragedy of the commons like never before unfolded.

The rest is history.

"Buffalo This" salutes President Barack Obama. Better luck next time, Bob.

And the next president is... BOB BARR!

2008-11-04T16:06:00.000-08:00

This is the moment you've all been waiting for. Today, November 4, is Election Day in the United States of America, and based on early results, "Buffalo This" officially declares that this race is in the books and we can safely declare the winner to be the Libertarian candidate, former U.S. Representative from Georgia's 7th district BOB BARR!

The 44th U.S. President, Bobbert L. "Bob" Barr
(Fun Fact: the mustache is real and it is awesome)

To get an idea of how this happened, let's take a look at the voting results from several key U.S. states:

Alaska
This is Sarah Palin country through and through. Screw McCain - as you've seen in the news, Palin has gone "rogue" and is hoping to pick up some electoral votes of her own. With 97% of precincts reporting, the Alaska vote currently stands at:
Palin 44% (all write-ins)
Obama 28%
McCain 27%
Barr 1%

I think we can safely call this one for "Caribou Barbie."

California
This historically blue state was expected to provide 55 easy electoral votes for Barack Obama. The results so far, however, have been fairly surprising. This year, California implemented a new voting system where each voter simply writes the first three letters of the candidate's name. On the ballot, the example provided is: "If you wanted to vote for Ichiro Suzuki, you would write 'Ich.'" Of course in Japanese the last name comes first, so the voters should know that they are supposed to write first three letters of the last name of the candidate rather than the first name. With 93% of precincts reporting, the results are as follows:
"Bar" 57%
"Joh" 34%
"Ich" 8%
"Bob" 1%

These results have been translated into the following outcome:
Bob Barr 57%
Scarlett Johansson 34%
Ichiro Suzuki 8%
John Bobbitt 1%

This looks like a definite 55 electoral votes for Bob Barr, despite impressive third-party showings from Johansson and Ichiro, who somehow failed to receive even 0.001% of the vote in any other state.

Ohio
Unfortunately they forgot to un-rig the voting machines here after the 2004 election. As a result, George W. Bush is expected to defeat John Kerry by the slimmest of margins, of 51% to 49%.

Texas
Like California, this reliably red state also instituted an innovative new voting method for the 2008 elections. Instead of picking a candidate using traditional voters, Texans must pick the symbol for the candidate or party they support. The three choices this year, excluding minor-party candidates were a donkey (Democrat), an elephant (representing Babar, i.e. Bob Barr), and Sarah Palin hunting wolves from a helicopter (Republican). With 99% of precincts reporting, it looks like the results are as follows:
Elephant 45% (see right)
Donkey 42%
Palin hunting wolves 12%

Despite the fact that Obama has made a surprisingly strong showing here, enough results are in that we can confidently call this one for Bob Barr. That's 34 more electoral votes if you're keeping score at home.

Utah
This super-conservative Mormon State was considered solid McCain territory until early this morning, when the Barr campaign released a statement that Joseph Smith himself had just descended from the heavens to endorse Bob Barr. Since then, Barr has taken a commanding lead with 89% of the overall vote in this state.

As you can see in the below electoral map, Bob Barr has won this election in a landslide. Obama, once considered the front-runner, carried only his home state of Illinois, his birth state of Hawaii, and two super-hippie New England states, Vermont and Massachusetts. McCain, who many also thought was likely to pick up a fair share of electoral votes, won only his home state of Arizona and Florida, where there are a lot of old people, who often name the #1 quality they look for in a leader as "not plastering on the make-up like a trollop."

Final Electoral Vote totals:
Barr 438
Obama 40
McCain 37
Bush 20
Palin 3

Well, it looks like America has spoken. All hail President Barr!

Halloween tips

2008-10-31T19:14:00.000-07:00

If you've checked your calendar recently, you've probably noticed a weird occurrence that's scheduled to take place today, October 31. This odd event is called "Halloween." Now most Americans aren't aware of this holiday, but there was a time in our nation's history when people actually cared about Halloween.

How can I find out how to celebrate this "Halloween" without coming off as a clueless buffoon, you may ask? Not to worry, I have a few little tips for you right here:

1) Remember the tradition
Halloween started as a pagan ritual in which people dressed up in the scariest outfits possible and danced around a fire in an attempt to frighten evil spirits. This is NOT the tradition that you should remember, however.

Halloween today is just like any other holiday: the goal is to get drunk and get laid. What makes Halloween different from other get drunk/get laid holidays (St. Patrick's Day, New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Day, etc) is that one part of the original tradition is retained: the costume. However, do NOT dress up in a scary costume whatever you do. It makes you look like too much of a traditionalist and also tends to freak people out, which may make them choose not to engage in drunken sexual relations with you.

2) Stick to the unofficial costume code
If you are a single woman, your options are the following: slutty nurse, slutty cat, slutty rabbit, slutty devil, slutty witch, or prostitute. If you are not comfortable with any of those, you must dress up as a nun (which most people probably already think will be your future career).

If you are a single man, you must dress up in whatever costume gives you the best chance of getting laid. Creativity and uniqueness generally make you stand out from the crowd. Group costumes also attract attention, especially ones that women will consider cute. Dressing up as the cast of "Happy Feet" (penguins) might be a good choice. The drawback to a group costume, however, is that you must fight off your similarly-dressed "bros" for women that fall into your clever trap.

If you are a married couple, you have to dress up as two things that go together, such as salt and pepper shakers, a plug and an outlet, or a prisoner and a warden (the last one may hit a little too close to home for some of you). NO EXCEPTIONS.

3) Don't dress up as anything related to a tragic event unless it's been long enough that it's funny
If you dress up as Alexander Hamilton with a bullet wound or a deformed Chernobyl victim, people may consider it rather humorous. The first of those two examples happened over 40 years ago (the general cutoff) and the second happened over 20 years ago (the cutoff if it happened in a different country). A tandem costume of Catherine the Great and a horse would be a particularly big hit if you could pull it off. However, if you dress up as Steve Irwin with a stingray attached to your chest, that is NOT FUNNY! It is WAY too soon for that, you insensitive prick!

4) Three words: "Where's your costume?"
This is a hilarious joke that never gets old. You can always be sure to get a lot of laughs by making this comment or something along the same line when the person really is wearing a rather scary or disgusting costume. Is your boss's wife dressed up like Frankenstein? Is your friend's mother wearing an impressive Linda Tripp outfit? If so, then insinuating that this person does not look any different than normal is a guaranteed knee-slapper.

You: "Where are your costumes?"

What if someone is extremely sensitive and gets offended, you ask? Easy. Just say, "Come on, don't be such a Hallo-weenie." Everyone dreads being called this, so on October 31 it is an easy out that can serve as an escape ladder after any inappropriate comment.

Six more months!

2008-10-27T22:12:00.000-07:00

No, this isn't a post about the remaining tenure of George W. Bush (which is actually less than 3 months). Besides, why would you ever want "W" to leave office? That guy is hilarious! I guarantee you that neither McCain nor Obama will be half the comedian that our current president is.

No, this post is actually about a fairly common topic on this blog: The Large Hadron Collider. If you haven't been reading this blog or the news very much, I'll sum up the LHC for you in one brief sentence:

The LHC is a big, scary atom smasher in Europe that's going to kill you.

Now, the LHC should be well on its way to colliding protons, lead ions, babies, kittens, and the like head-on (~~apply directly to the forehead~~) at near-light speeds, smashing them to pieces. Unfortunately (or fortunately for those of you who don't want the world to be destroyed), a transformer (~~robot in disguise~~) failed and some wires melted. Then some helium leaked out, making the scientists' voices too high for them to understand each other. And now, winter's coming and people don't really feel like fixing the LHC now because it's getting too cold outside and they're going to start showing holiday specials like the claymation version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" on TV soon. As a result of all these problems, the startup of the collider has been delayed until Spring 2009.

So what does this mean for you, Joe Sixpack? Simple - it means you just got six extra months to live. This may pose a dilemma for those of you who have already accepted your fate as a black hole's mid-morning snack and are currently lying on the floor of your parents' living room in the fetal position waiting to meet your doom. That dilemma is: Now that I have six more months to live, what the hell do I do?

As with all other problems you face in your life, "Buffalo This" is here with some suggestions to help you out. Here they are:

1) Take up a charitable cause
There is no more honorable use of your pre-apocalyptic time than working to make life more enjoyable for disadvantaged people between now and the time their very molecules are ripped apart by a black hole.

A few examples of major problems that you can do something about right now are:
-Starving children in Africa
-Obese children in the U.S.
-People failing to clear unused time off the microwave after cooking their food
-Unfortunate investment bankers who have recently had to trade down to smaller yachts
-Human rights violations in the Middle East
-France
-People talking during other people's backswings on the golf course
-Lack of access to education in poor neighborhoods
-Paris Hilton
-People eating all of your favorite type of candy bar out of the variety pack, leaving only the not-as-good ones
-Homes needing rebuilding in areas hit by natural disasters
-The fact that humanity does not know how to stop black holes from expanding

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and start saving the world before there's no world to save!

2) Save yourself

Not exactly the charitable type? Then screw those starving kids in Somalia - just try to save yourself! How exactly do you save yourself from a black hole, you may ask? Easy - you get the hell away from it as fast as possible. Now that you have six more months, you may want to consider building a spaceship that will do just that. Just build a compartment with at least a few years' supply of oxygen, food (Easy Mac or Cup o' Noodles will work), and water, strap a big-ass engine to it, add fuel, then light it, jump in, and let it blast you off into space in whatever direction you think is most likely to have a planet you can live on (try Alpha Centauri). The rest will take care of itself. Hey, it's better than being sucked into a black hole, isn't it?

3) Build ships in a bottle

Do it while you still can! When you learn that a black hole is waiting to spaghettify you, you will be too mentally distraught to have the dexterity you'll need to build that little ship. Why enjoy the last few months or years with family and friends when you can do something really useful with your time? People of course will be amazed at your craftsmanship, saying things like, "No way! How in the world did you ever get that ship into that bottle? That's impossible! Come on, tell me!" You must never reveal your secret, however. That way, people will spend their remaining time wondering how you did it, rather than worrying about their impending fate. Think of it this way: if you were falling into a black hole, would you rather be screaming, "AAAAAH!!! I'm falling into a black hole! Oh no, it's starting to spaghettify me!!! AAAAAAAH!!!" or, "How did that guy get that darned ship into that bottle? If I come out of this alive I absolutely must figure that out."

4) Attempt to do everything listed in Tim McGraw's song "Live Like You Were Dying"
This song is a handy guide to all the things you should do before being spaghettified by a black hole (or dying in any other manner). Some examples are the following:

Skydiving
Rocky Mountain climbing (Rocky Mountains, NOT the Alps or the Himalayas)
2.7 seconds on a bull named Fu Manchu (this is the hardest one - you must both verify the bull's name and keep a stopwatch with you to make sure you fall off after exactly 2.7 seconds, then get out of the way before the bull gores you)
Fishing with your dad exactly three times the year before the black hole kills him (and you)
Speak sweeter
Give forgiveness you've been denying (maybe to Henry Paulson for the bailout or to Ryan Reynolds for marrying Scarlett Johansson before you were able to make your move and for failing to participate in the sequel to "Van Wilder")
Read "the good book" (any good book will do - you may want to try The Great Gatsby as it is relatively short and manageable)
Watch an eagle as it is flying

One thing Tim forgot to include, however, is "two chicks at the same time." That is an essential element that should be on everyone's bucket list (women included).

5) Panic

If crazy shit is going on and you don't know what to do, panicking is always a reliable fallback option. The tricky part here is knowing when to start panicking. If you start panicking too early, people are going to think you're crazy. If you start too late, on the other hand, people are going to criticize you as a bandwagon-jumper.

The best advice I can give you here is to find the coolest, most stylish and with-it person you know, then wait til he or she starts panicking. When this happens, take to the streets and run around maniacally while throwing your arms in the air and screaming like a banshee. Everyone else will most likely follow your lead soon after.

The World Series

2008-10-25T13:45:00.000-07:00

As a baseball guy, I feel that it would be criminal for me not to post at least once on the current World Series. Now since baseball doesn't have much mass appeal these days, I'm not going to analyze obscure sabermetrics and launch into prolonged discussions regarding whether Chase Utley is a better complete player than Evan Longoria.

So the 7-game series is tied 1-1, which means the two teams will basically play a best-of-5 from here on out to determine who is crowned World Champions. (Quite a coincidence how the two teams playing for the WORLD championship are both from the east coast of the U.S., isn't it?)

Well without further ado, here are 5 fearless predictions for the remainder of the series:

1) One of the announcers makes a B.J. Upton joke, then gets fired
Chances are it goes something like this:
Announcer 1: "It's back...way back...and it's gone! Home run, B.J. Upton!"
Announcer 2: "B.J. Upton has really played well in this postseason. He's going to be a terrific player for the Rays in the next few years."
Announcer 1: "You got that right. He's the best B.J. Upton since that time I picked up a hooker on the Upper East Side last year."
(Cut to "technical difficulties" screen as a TV executive comes over and tries to choke Announcer 1)

2) Tony Parker sighting!
As most of you probably know, San Antonio Spurs point guard Tony Parker married Tampa Bay Rays third baseman Evan Longoria in 2007 in San Francisco despite major protests from the religious right.

Chances are Tony shows up to a game or two to cheer on his beloved in his first season in the big time.

3) America gets a "Hot Carl" at some point or another
There are three players in the current World Series named "Carl" or something starting with "Carl": the Phillies' Carlos Ruiz and the Rays' Carlos Pena and Carl Crawford. One of these players is bound to break out with a game-changing performance at some point? Who will it be? I'm going with Carl Crawford, the only real Carl on the list.

This season was rather disappointing for proponents of crude sexual maneuvers, as the "Cleveland Steamer" ran out of gas early (Indians finished 81-81) and the Reds failed to pull of a late-season "Cincinnati Surprise" (instead finishing 74-88). What's going to happen now? My guess is that the Phillies take a two-run lead into the 9th inning of Game 7 and seemingly have the series in hand, but then pull a "Philly Fakeout" as closer Brad Lidge allows Crawford to defecate on the Phillies' faces (figuratively speaking of course) with a huge bases-load triple that drives home the winning run.

4) Rays pitcher Grant Balfour gets into a confusing exchange with the umpire after allowing a walk
Chances are it will go something like this:
Ump: "Ball four! Take your base!"
Balfour: "What do you mean 'take your base?' I'm the pitcher."
Ump: "Not you. The hitter. That was ball four."
Balfour: "No, I'm Balfour."
Ump: "I know."
Balfour: "Then what's going on here?"
Ump: "Ball four."
Balfour: "What?"
Ump: "I'm not talking about you."
Balfour: "Then who are you talking about? My brother?"
(and so on)

Left: Rays catcher Dioner Navarro settles down pitcher Grant Balfour by saying something along the lines of, "Settle down, dude. The ump's not trying to call you out. You just walked the guy."

5) 99% of America won't care what happens
Who's playing again? The Yankees? No. The Red Sox? No. The Cubs? No. That zapping sound you just heard was the simultaneous turning-off of approximately 200 million TV sets across America. There are really only three teams in baseball as far as most of the nation is concerned.

America is about as bummed about this year's world series matchup as Michael Vick would be if he showed after being promised an exciting dogfight, only to find that the "fight" was really just a heated argument between two of the miniature purse-jockeys from "Beverly Hills Chihuahua." Unless you're in Philadelphia or Tampa, don't be surprised if your local sports bar opts for bowling, poker, midget tossing, or the World Series of Darts.

Word on the street #8: A prostitute

2008-10-20T21:40:00.000-07:00

You may be wondering which term you should use when referring to your friendly neighborhood prostitute, depending on how you feel about her at the time. Well wonder no more. Here are 10 different terms for "prostitute," "streetwalker," or "woman of ill repute," ranked from most offensive to least.

So the next time you want to take a page out of John McCain's book and say, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a _____, you _____!" you'll have just the words to fill in those tricky blanks!

10) Village bicycle
What you may think is a clever metaphor is the ultimate insult to your local streetwalker. Not only does it imply that she has been "ridden" by many men, it also calls her one of the cheapest, slowest modes of transportation out there. It beats "village pogo stick," but "village Maserati" or "village Concorde" may be a better choice.

9) Ho-bag(g)
Well I never! If you refer to a prostitute by this term, you are insinuating that she is somehow descended from the families of Ho Chi Minh and Richard Bagg (of "Van Wilder"). Illegitimate love-child of an evil Communist leader and a douchey, uptight pre-med frat boy? No thanks.

8) Trollop
As John McCain once said to his wife, "At least I don't plaster on the make-up like a trollop, you cunt!" This term is something that John McCain pulled from his childhood in the late 1800's (or was it mid 1800's?). The term is extremely antiquated, but legend has it that a "trollop" was a very, very bad thing to call somebody.

7) Strumpet
Another old one, similar to "trollop." However this one is very easy to play off, as the sound "strumpet" comes up quite frequently in the English language. For example:
"Strumpet? No, I said, 'He was playing his trumpet.'"
"Strumpet? No, we were just playing a game of cards and I said, 'If you play a club, my hearts trump it.'"
"Strumpet? No, I said, 'Captain Morgan's parrot is definitely the best rum pet.'"
The possibilities are endless.

6) Hooker
Sounds a bit offensive, but fortunately you have an easy out here. When the strumpet in question takes offense to this term, you should clarify what you meant by saying, "I was talking about T.J. Hooker from the TV series, you know, William Shatner." To which the prostitute will likely respond, "Shatner? I barely even know her!" You will then both have a good laugh and be on your merry way.

5) Whore
Actually quite an offensive term, but the prostitute will appreciate that you expended the energy required to move your facial muscles enough to pronounce the "w" and the "re" rather than just saying "ho" (which it ends up isn't really that offensive - see below). Just make sure you enunciate.

4) Ho
This is actually a common Chinese surname. To be offended by this would be to admit that you are ethnically intolerant, and nobody wants to be branded as that. A surprisingly safe bet.

3) Working girl
With this term, you are acknowledging that being a prostitute is a tough job that requires extreme mental fortitude as well as physical endurance. Quite respectful.

2) Escort
Escort is a pretty nice term to use, as it was derived from the old English term "Ford Escort," which means a comfortable yet affordable car that gets you where you're going and can be counted on to last well upwards of 100,000 miles. Compared to something like "nasty, disease-ridden weather-beaten chickenhead" or "village Pinto," this one sounds pretty good.

1) Mom
Because really, it would be disrespectful to refer to your mother by any of those other terms. Shame on you! (Yes, I had to go there.)

The "smart" bus

2008-10-18T13:53:00.000-07:00

If you've been living somewhere other than under a rock for the last few years, you've probably noticed that you hear the word "hybrid" a lot. Ok, "a lot" is an understatement - "hybrid" has basically become the second most common word in the English language after "the." Your typical hybrid car is one that runs on a combination of gas and electric power which gets over 40 miles per gallon and is usually driven by hippies, yuppies, or any other types of people who might be called "'ppies" for short.

If we can "hybridize" cars to make them fuel-efficient, why not buses? Those big old hogs irresponsibly tool around town, carting kids to school, rock bands to their venues/drug dealers, and compulsive gamblers to Atlantic City, all the while getting something like 6 miles per gallon. Now we could make every bus a gas-electric hybrid to improve that figure to 15 mpg or so. Unfortunately that would not be a feasible solution, as approximately 78% of Americans pride themselves on not being part of the "Prius crowd" and would refuse to ride in such a vehicle.

Fortunately there is another way to make vehicles more fuel efficient rather than resorting to that ridiculous gas-electric mumbo-jumbo: just make them smaller. The "Smart car" is an example of this technique. This Gary Coleman of vehicles has been popular in Europe for years and is just starting to take hold in the U.S. The top 3 reasons to drive a Smart car are as follows:

3) To save gas.

2) To feel like you're playing golf all the time by cruising around in something the size of a golf cart (except without room for your clubs).

1) To "live on the edge" and add excitement to your life by knowing that you're completely screwed if you're ever involved in a crash with anything larger than a pygmy ground squirrel.

If we can shrink cars, why not shrink buses? The fact is that most buses don't use anywhere near their full capacities. I mean it's not like the notoriously global warmers known as the Partridge Family needed those extra 5 rows of seats! Shame on them! As punishment for his egregiously large carbon footprint, David Cassidy should have to be smacked upside the head by Al Gore with the skin of a dead polar bear every day for the next 10 years.

So why not apply the Smart car idea to create a Smart bus? It would allow people to transport fairly large groups around AND save gas and the environment while still maintaining that ultra-cool "bus image."

The Smart car-bus hybrid might look something like this:

When people see a bus like this, you can rest assured that the first word that will come to their minds regarding the people riding inside is definitely "smart."

Name game #1: Joe

2008-10-16T18:08:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back. Hopefully you didn't jump off a bridge thinking this award-winning blog had gone the way of the dinosaurs and John McCain's presidential hopes (sorry - too soon?). Ends up I've just been bogged down with the usual stuff: work, anti-Large Hadron Collider protests, several-day peyote and/or acid trips in the Mojave desert, and trying to revive my baseball career by playing in the local "senior" league.

Now I'm back and bloggin' once again. So what's been going on in the world for the past week or so? The economy totally tanked and we're heading for a second Great Depression. Whatever. I've got my money safely tied up in AAA-rated Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs), as should any smart investor. People have also been talking about a lot of Joes recently - Joe Biden, Joe Sixpack, Joe the plumber. Who are these mysterious yet intriguing characters?

This brings me to a new segment I'd like to call "Name game." In each installment of this segment, I'll list the top ten people with a certain name and describe why each should be either loved or hated. Here we go with Name game #1: Joe:

10) Joe the plumber

The best friend of Senator John McCain and arch-nemesis of Senator Barack Obama, Joe the plumber is a rich-ass pipe-fixer who brings in over $250,000 a year. Obama contends that because Joe is wealthy, he could afford to pay a little more in taxes. McCain, on the other hand, believes that because plumbers have to deal with unclogging toilets all day, they deserve a tax break no matter how rich they might be. We must say NO to the plumber tax breaks! If we allow this to happen, pretty soon we will have "Bill Gates the plumber," "Warren Buffett the plumber," and probably even "John and Cindy McCain the plumbers." Everyone will become plumbers just to avoid paying taxes, leaving nobody to do the rest of the work that society needs done. Hey, at least we won't have to deal with clogged-up crappers ever again!

9) Joe from the saying "Say it ain't so, Joe"

Nobody likes a naysayer. Besides, there's no denying the fact that "it" definitely IS so. This saying originally referred to Shoeless Joe Jackson of Black Sox Scandal fame, but can refer to any Joe who is considered to be "rain on a parade" or "ants at a picnic." From now on I propose that we refer to such Joes as "Debbie Downer" or just "Debbie."

8) Joe, North Carolina

A couple miles south of the bustling metropolis of Hot Springs lies shitty little Joe, NC. If you Google Map it and zoom in further, you will see that Joe is nothing more than a random location in the middle of the woods. The only other town nearby (a few miles east) is named Stackhouse, after obnoxious UNC basketball star Jerry Stackhouse. For these reasons, Joe, NC wins the official title of "Worst place to live in the universe," narrowly beating out the surface of the sun and just inside the event horizon of a supermassive black hole.

7) Joe Biden

Listen, I already covered this guy in this post. He's old and he's from Delaware. Yawn.

6) "Joe Millionaire"

This show was based on the age-old trick of pretending you're rich to get a woman into bed (much like N.W.A.'s classic hit "I Ain't Tha 1"). "Joe" a.k.a. Evan Marriott, the star of the show, pretended he had inherited a huge fortune, but was really just a run-of-the-mill construction worker. Hey, Joe the plumber should try that trick! Oh wait, he already is rich.

5) "Joe Versus the Volcano"

Tom Hanks' greatest performance of all time. The part where they jumped into the volcano and were blown out by a sudden gust of wind was priceless! Damn it, I just ruined the movie for you. Sorry.

4) Joe Camel

Because sometimes you just need a cigarette, and this lovable cartoon icon reminds our kids of that indisputable fact.

3) Joe Sixpack

Everyone (not just Sarah Palin) loves the town drunk. He can always be counted on to tell us entertaining war stories and conspiracy theories at any hour of the day, any day of the week. Just head to your local bar and he'll be the old, dirty guy who hasn't shaven in a month with an impressive number of pint glasses and beer bottles haphazardly scattered around him.

2) Joe (coffee)

Without this miraculous liquid, we would live in a world where nobody did anything productive until after noon (similar to the world that is currently called "college").

1) Joe Mama

An endless source of hilarity, "joe mama" jokes are perfect for any occasion: the playground, the bus ride home from middle school, weddings, funerals, kickball games, presidential debates, labor strikes, you name it. If you're going to insult someone, hit 'em where it hurts!

Stuff white buffalo like (#5)

2008-10-07T09:00:00.000-07:00

For the 5th part in our series of blatant ripoffs of "Stuff white people like," it's the biggest ripoff yet: "Stuff white buffalo like." In case you've never heard of white buffalo, they're basically similar to white people: they enjoy such activities as drinking a glass of Chardonnay on a sailboat, playing a round of golf at the country club in argyle sweaters, voicing their support for Barack Obama, and lecturing others on the cultural traditions and needs of "colored" buffalo. Unlike white people, however, they are a very small minority in the U.S., where brown buffalo comprise more than 99% of the population. This demographic difference makes the social plight of white buffalo rather interesting. Right now you're probably on the edge of your seat wondering what these strange yet beautiful animals might be interested. Well the wait is over - here is some stuff white buffalo like...

Correcting bad grammar/typos

Like many white people, white buffalo are absolutely sickened by poor grammar or spelling. They will without exception instantly correct the offender and most likely ignore whatever message he/she was actually trying to get across, as important or interesting as that message might be.

For example, the following conversation would be fairly typical:

Brown buffalo: "Your never going to believe this! I just discovered an extension of Einstein's special theory of relativity! By my calculations, it should allow for faster-than-light interstellar travel as well as time travel to both the future and the past. This is going to revolutionize science! When you get some time, you should read my 83-page mathematical proof."
White buffalo: "Um...did you just use 'your' instead of 'you're?' You honestly must be mentally retarded. You disgust me, you ignorant slob. Begone!"

Note that white buffalo consider any grammatical errors in the buffalo phenomenon especially egregious. If you make such an error, prepare to be permanently ostracized from white buffalo circles and possibly even burned at the stake.

Irony
After writing this, I realized it also appeared in "Stuff white people like" (see post here). What a coincidence! Like white people, white buffalo consider irony to be the highest form of humor and will use it at every opportunity. For example, when something crazy and unpredictable happens, you might hear a white buffalo use the phrase "black swan event" to describe it. Normally using this saying would not be considered strange. However, since a white buffalo is much more rare and striking as a black swan, you would expect a white buffalo to instead use the phrase "white buffalo event." The fact that the buffalo ignores such an obvious and pertinent alternative saying is a classic example of irony at its best.

Now there is one trap that you must be certain not to fall into when interacting with white buffalo, and that is mistaking Alanis Morissette-style "irony" for actual irony. If you make this error, white buffalo will usually respond derisively and instantly lose all respect for you. For example, if you say something like, "Dude, the other day I needed a spoon to eat my yogurt so I went to the silverware drawer and there were like 10,000 knives in there but NO spoons. It was so ironic." then you can expect a response along the lines of, "That's not ironic, idiot. It's just poor silverware management. I mean who doesn't own a single spoon? Also, if it's really true that you have 10,000 knives, then you've just removed the last shred of doubt in my mind that you're a psychotic killer. Go bison yourself, OJ Simpson."

The name "Mark Ruffalo" (and the activity)
White buffalo enjoy the name "Mark Ruffalo," and not just because "Ruffalo" is the only true rhyme for "buffalo." You see, white buffalo have the chameleon-like advantage of being able to take on the color of any liquid that is thrown on them. If you cover a white buffalo in buffalo sauce, it becomes a red buffalo, commonly known as a "ruffalo." In addition, like people, buffalo refer to someone who is weak and easily duped as a "mark." A common prank that white buffalo will pull on each other is called "Mark Ruffaloing." To Mark Ruffalo a buffalo, you must trick said buffalo into walking into some kind of booby trap where a series of strings and pulleys or the like are rigged up to a bucket waiting to cover him/her in buffalo sauce.

A white buffalo about to be Mark Ruffaloed:

It is important to note that white buffalo absolutely do not actually like Mark Ruffalo the actor. Believe me, they found "13 Going on 30" and "Rumor Has It" just as nauseating as you did, if not more so.

Bailout bonanza part II

2008-10-04T16:44:00.000-07:00

On Thursday I explained to you how the bailout is an excellent tool that the government can use to help downtrodden victims of tragic events such as investment bank CEOs. So it looks like the $700 billion Wall Street bailout is going to happen now that both the House and Senate have passed it. It will only be a matter of time before we're bailing out airlines, oil companies, healthcare providers, and gamblers in Las Vegas. But why stop there? There are so many more problems in this country that can easily be solved with a few hundred billion dollars! Here are a few other bailout ideas that the government absolutely MUST consider to make things right for victims of other major crises:

The prisoners' bailout

Criminals are a demographic group that has been mistreated by the U.S. government throughout our nation's history. Instead of allowing them the freedoms afforded to the rest of American citizens, we keep them locked up in cells all day, being forced to make license plates and play on terrible football teams with Adam Sandler as their quarterback and Burt Reynolds as their coach. How can we make it up to them? Bail them out - literally! The government should post bail money for every criminal, from Winona Ryder to Charles Manson. Then, to give them a good start in their new life of freedom, give each of them $10,000. If after a few years many of them end up in jail once again, another bailout may be needed.

The Jared Fogle bailout

Obesity has become an increasingly serious problem in America. How do you conquer obesity? Well, exercise is obviously out of the question, because 1) nobody can afford gym memberships with the economy as bad as it is, 2) global warming has made outdoor exercise unbearable, and 3) there are so many good TV shows on these days, leaving no time for exercise. The one factor that is within our control is how we eat. As our beloved Jared Fogle showed us, you can lose a lot of weight just by eating at Subway for every meal. So why not bail out everyone in America with a BMI (body mass index) over 30 (the cutoff for obesity) by giving each of them $10 a day to use on Subway subs? Let's just hope they don't use that money to wolf down footlong Chicken Bacon Ranch subs with cheese, which weigh in at 1280 calories and 70 grams of fat apiece. But why would they - they want to lose weight, don't they? There's no way obese people would ever choose to eat something so unhealthy!

The smugglers' bailout

Every year, drug smugglers lose many millions of dollars worth of product due to crackdowns by U.S. government officials. These huge losses have put many a smuggler's business and livelihood in peril, and the drug smuggling community has become increasingly agitated by these government seizures. How can we make it up to them? Bail them out, of course! Whenever smugglers are caught before delivering a shipment, compensate them for this inconvenience with a $1,000,000 check! Remember to suggest to the smugglers that they should use the money to stimulate the U.S. economy, rather than to buy better smuggling boats or more drugs. Can we trust them to actually do this? Well, we trusted Wall Street, didn't we?

The bailout bailout

Despite the fact that the government supports it, a lot of (extremely unpatriotic) Americans are outraged about the bailout. How can the politicians appease them? Bail them out, of course! Allow any American citizen who did not support the bailout to send an official statement of their position to Washington, and then send each of them a $5,000 check. Of course there will be people out there who supported the original bailout and are angry about the bailout bailout, but then they can be bailed out in a bailout bailout bailout.

The buffalo bailout

In the late 19th century, millions of buffalo were killed by hunters across the American plains. Yet 100 years later, the government has done next to nothing to make amends for this atrocious act. But what can the government do? Money obviously has little use to a buffalo, but money does have considerable use to buffalo activists. Therefore I propose the government should give $10 million to anyone who publicly supports buffalo, specifically buffalo conservationists and anyone who writes a blog having to do with buffalo. Like the economic bailout, this is an urgent matter and must be done immediately as there is no time to think about it or consider the alternatives (there are none anyway). So George, if you're listening, I would like my bailout money in a suitcase of unmarked $100 bills, and if you could deliver that by next Wednesday or so, that would be great.

Bailout bonanza part I

2008-10-02T20:59:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back. I'm sure many of you thought (or hoped) that I was lost forever to a Vermont hippie commune, sitting around a campfire and singing "Kumbaya" with a bunch of scraggly long-haired shower dodgers. Or maybe you thought I was actually a major investment bank in disguise as a blogger and had gone the way of Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch. Well the truth is that I occasionally have to deal with this minor annoyance called a day job, and let's just say that if things went sour I wouldn't be the last person they'd show to the door. Anyway, I'm back and ready to start bloggin' it up once again.

So, in case you haven't been following the news, the U.S. economy is in shambles! Americans in all walks of life are beginning to suffer, but none are suffering more than the honest, well-meaning bankers and traders on Wall Street. I would like to share with you a few examples of the horrors they have had to face. WARNING: What you are about to read is extremely disturbing and may not be suitable for small children. Here are a few of the more heartbreaking cases:

The investment banking managing director who, thanks to a meager $2 million bonus instead of last year's $15 million, has to survive in the dirty squalor of a house with only 3 butlers instead of 5.
The hedge fund manager who is struggling to make ends meet and had to go as far as to sell his private jet just to afford the mortgage payments for his 8th home.
The bank CEO who recently lost his job and was thrown out on the street with a mere $40 million and is now scraping by to survive.
The head of mortgage-backed securities at a major bank who now has to suffer through the heartbreaking indignity of having to fill his Olympic-sized swimming pool with $100 bills rather than gold doubloons worth over $1000 each.

The humanity! Fortunately for these poor, dejected souls, there is a ray of hope: a $700 billion government bailout. If it works, this could put the beluga caviar back on their plates and the doubloons back in their swimming pools. Unfortunately the bailout failed on its first vote in the House, but most people expect that a slightly modified bill will be passed within the next month. Well, when you recklessly gamble and lose, it's nice to know that the government, led by Henry Paulson (or "Saint Henry" after he heroically rescues the American people) will gladly repay your debts. Speaking of which, I lost $50,000 on the roulette wheel when I was drunk at the Mirage last weekend - remind me to call ol' Henry and have him cut me a check for that.

You see, the U.S. government has access to an endless supply of money that it can whip out at any time to do whatever it pleases. If you succeed in getting the politicians in Washington to feel sorry enough for you, you will be rewarded with a huge check. But you'd better have a pretty damned sad story (see those above). Do NOT go crying to Uncle Sam with something lame such as, "I'm a recently widowed mother of 4 who has been working two jobs since the death of my husband 6 months ago just to make ends meet. Now I can't pay the mortgage for my family's home since the rate has jumped from 7% to 20% and my home's value has been cut in half. Please help!" If you whine about a mild inconvenience such as this rather than a real problem, the government will not only ignore your request, but will take actions to spite you, such as giving the CEO of the bank that will soon own your about-to-be-foreclosed house a $1 billion check, no questions asked.

Where does this money come from, you may ask? Well, there are 3 major cash cows that the government can milk until the cows come home (sorry about all the cow references):

1) Taxpayers

A sucker is born every minute, and these suckers are known to the government as "taxpayers." There are approximately 140 million of them in the country. The best thing is, they're usually so caught up in party bickering that they won't even notice if you stick your hand in their respective cookie jars and pull out $5,000 or so from each (on average). They'll be too busy having arguments like:

"Bush ruined the economy!"

"No, Clinton ruined the economy!"

"Palin's daughter is a slut. Like mother like daughter!"

"Well 'Obama' sounds like 'Osama.' That proves he supports terrorists!"

"I heard Obama once snorted coke off the buttcheeks of a transgendered prostitute!"

"Oh yeah, well I heard McCain once clubbed a whole bunch of baby chipmunks to death!"

These people will NEVER notice the missing cash!

2) The national debt

Why even bother robbing the general public when you can just borrow money and never pay it back? Right now, the U.S. government is over $10 trillion in debt and couldn't give a rat's ass! Who cares if we owe China $1 trillion and they want us to pay it back? George W. Bush can just walk up to Hu Jintao, slap him across the face, and say something like, "You ain't getting it back, because we're America! Woohoo! Deal with it, bitch!"

3) The money printing machine

Finding some cash to throw around is never a problem when you're the one that prints it! Want to give your Wall Street buddies some money to cover their losses on Bear Stearns stock? Just print out $100 billion and give it to them! Want to fund a war in Iraq? Fire that thing up and print out $1 trillion! Want to cover the entire outer surface of the White House in high-quality diamonds? Print out $10 trillion and "git 'er dun!" It's that easy!

So bring on the bailouts! What's the worst that could happen?

I'll be in Vermont - Buffalo you later!

2008-09-26T08:32:00.000-07:00

Well, looks like I'm headed back up north and won't be posting for a few days. Settle down, they're not throwing me in the slammer again - I'm going to Vermont for the weekend for a cousin's wedding. What is this "Vermont" you speak of, you may ask? Well let me pull out my best Craig David impersonation and fill you in.

Vermont is more than just a cold, hippie-filled state shrouded in a permanent cloud of weed smoke. If you look on the map, it's the one that looks like an upside-down New Hampshire, right next to the rightside-up New Hampshire. Vermont is an extremely diverse state whose largest ethnic groups, in order, are French-Americans (23%), English-Americans (18%), Irish-Americans (16%), German-Americans (9%), American-Americans (8%), Italian-Americans (6%), and Scottish-Americans (5%). The state's largest city, Burlington, is also home to small refugee communities from Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe, who moved there after being informed by Tom Petty that they don't have to live like refugees. Vermont is most famous as the birthplace of great Mormon leaders Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, and the setting for the classic film "Super Troopers."

Here are some notable facts about the "great" state of Vermont (notice the quotation marks around "great"):

State beverage: Schlitz, 6 of 'em at a time (source: "Super Troopers")

State pastime: 1) syrup-chugging, 2) "cat game" (source: "Super Troopers")

State bestiality fetishes: tie between bears and chickens (source: "Super Troopers")

State movie: "Super Troopers"

State food: Ben & Jerry's ice cream (source: common knowledge)

State mineral: talc (source: Wikipedia)

State plant: marijuana (source: common knowledge)

State bird: hermit thrush (source: Wikipedia)

State musical artist: The Grateful Dead (come on, they're hippies)

Favorite blogs: 1) "Stuff White People Like" (see ethnic breakdown above), 2) "The Marijuana News Blog" (see state plant) 3) "Buffalo This" (this one always seems to make the list)

I'll see you on Monday, or if I don't, I was probably sucked into the dreaded black hole of hippiedom..........or a black hole created by the Large Hadron Collider.

The LHC: Famous last words

2008-09-24T22:47:00.000-07:00

All right. We've established that there's a decent chance that the Large Hadron Collider is going to destroy our planet in these four posts:

Bummed about the LHC? Try some THC.

The LHC might not kill us after all!

Sucker bet

Particle colliders give me a "large hadron"

So, in the not too unlikely possibility that the human race is about to be permanently obliterated from the universe, are there any last words that we want to say before we go? There damn well should be. Before we begin the collisions, I suggest we send a message to the cosmos saying something like:

We're about to conduct a physics experiment that (brief description of what the LHC does). It might kill us, so if you don't hear from us again, then that's probably what happened. Peace out, homies - catch you on the flipside!

This message will serve as a warning to alien civilizations that are debating and blogging about whether they should run their own LHCs. Why should we care whether aliens live or die? Because we should care about the welfare of all living things, you selfish prick. We're not so different, us and them. Sure, they might want to kill us - I mean in pretty much every movie involving aliens, that's what they're trying to do. We may want revenge for what they tried to do to Will Smith and company in "Independence Day." But we really can't blame them, because the truth is that we also want to kill us (why else would we build the LHC?). On top of this, we and the aliens do have common enemies, such as entropy, black holes, and France. Entropy in particular is a real bitch that is strongly abhorred by all lifeforms. F@%# YOU, ENTROPY!

Now you may be thinking, "Wait a minute, hotshot. Sending such a message to aliens might reveal not only that we exist, but also where we are in space and the fact that our technology is pretty unsophisticated. Aren't we basically inviting them to bring their ships over and blast us to kingdom come?" Well yes and no. By that I mean yes, but they might choose not to come and kill us because a) it would be a waste of their time, and b) they appreciate the thoughtful gesture. Besides, we've already been sending "come and kill us" messages to outer space for a long time. For example, the Arecibo Message of 1974 (see left) was basically a bunch of dots that translated to something like, "Hey guys. This is the human race from planet Earth speaking. Feel free to come over and cornhole us whenever you get a chance. Here's some other information that will make killing us easier for you, like our size, our chemical makeup, and our location. See ya!"

Now let's say we smash some stuff in the LHC, and lo and behold, we notice that a black hole has begun eating away at the center of the planet en route to killing every living human being, dog, cat, octopus, praying mantis, bonsai tree, Venus flytrap, mushroom, ale yeast, dinoflagellate, amoeba, virus, you name it. At this point it is absolutely crucial that we alert anyone who might be listening of our impending fate. At this point we need to send something that can really catch someone's attention, like a catchy tune. My recommendation is Grandmaster Flash & Melle Mel's "White lines (Don't don't do it)." This incredibly persuasive little jingle describes in detail the great high you can get from cocaine and then tells you "d-d-d-d-don't d-d-don't do it!" The moral of this song is fairly tough to figure out, but what I took away from it was that snorting coke will give you a terrible stuttering problem.

So in case you were wondering why I'm not a coke addict, there's your answer.

If that doesn't stop ET from building its own black hole machine, I don't know what will. Of course, when we send this message out to the cosmos, we must make sure to remember to substitute "Large Hadron Collider" for all cocaine references. Otherwise, the aliens are seriously going to wonder what kind of weird civilization thought it was that important to broadcast anti-drug messages to everyone in a 500 light year radius.

Battle of the VP candidates (a.k.a. a new low)

2008-09-22T21:33:00.000-07:00

The truth about America is that the President doesn't really do anything. It's the Vice President that really matters. Look at the current administration. George W. Bush just hangs out at his ranch in Crawford, Texas and tries to make up words by switching letters around and adding suffixes, saying things like, "'mer'ca needs to stop the nucularification of Iran." Dick Cheney, on the other hand, takes care of all the important executive business, such as crafting evil schemes and shooting people in the face.

So Obama and McCain are duking it out for President. Whoop dee doo! Let's talk about what really matters: who we should pick for VP. To make the choice easier, I'm going to break down the pros and cons of the two candidates for you. Best of 10 wins!

Just to warn you, I intentionally tried to make the jokes in this post as stupid as possible, and since my jokes are already pretty stupid when I don't even intend them to be, what you're about to read will make Pauly Shore's "In the Army Now" look like a genius comedic masterpiece. Here we go...

Palin really came out of nowhere. Who is she? I have a feeling we might be "Sarah" (sorry) if we pick someone who has no clue how things go down in DC. Biden 1, Palin 0.

Biden is 65 years old. He's borderline senile! Old people are scientifically proven to be extremely boring. All they ever do is play bingo and tell long-winded war stories to anyone who will pretend to listen. Just looking at the guy makes me need a cup of "Joe." Biden 1, Palin 1.

Sarah Palin has so little experience relative to Joe Biden. In that respect, she's really "Palin" in comparison. Biden 2, Palin 1.

On the other hand, Sarah will bring youth to the vice presidency, unlike Joe, who's been "Biden" his time for 65 years. Biden 2, Palin 2.

Track and Trig are activities Biden did in high school, not ridiculous names he gave his sons. Biden 3, Palin 2.

Palin is straight out of Juneau. Her daughter is straight out of "Juno." Biden 4, Palin 2.

Biden is straight out of Dover. That hits a little too close to home. What, you don't get it? You're not a Washington insider? I am. No big deal. What I'm referring to is Operation Dover, the Democrats' strategy in 2000 and 2004. "Dover" is short for "BenDOVER and take it up the tailpipe from the Republicans." I don't think the 'crats want to repeat that one in 2008. Biden 4, Palin 3.

Delaware? More like Dela-where the hell is that? Is that even a state? Her state is about 300 times as big - Alaskans eat pieces of shit like that for breakfast. Biden 4, Palin 4.

Alaskans eat pieces of shit for breakfast? Do we really want someone like that in the White House? Biden 5, Palin 4.

Last but not least, the "would you hit it?" test. No contest, right Regis? I think we're going to have to go with the former Miss Wasilla and potential future VPILF on this one. Biden 5, Palin 5.

Well look at that...it's a tie. I'll bet you never saw that coming. I guess that means it's up to you to decide who your next Vice President will be. This country is unfortunately not a Buffalocracy - all 300 million of you get a vote, not just the wise, all-knowing sage who writes "Buffalo This." Make sure to pick someone though instead of just writing in "Mickey Mouse" again. Seriously, that's getting old. Stop it.

And there you have it - the most moronic commentary you're going to read this entire election season, narrowly beating Ann Coulter's previous record and setting new highs for stupidity, triteness, and corniness. I sincerely apologize for shaving 10 points off your IQ.

Naming your young'uns

2008-09-20T16:19:00.000-07:00

So you just popped out a young'un, did you (or if you're male, caused a young'un to pop out)? First, make sure the child is yours - yes, even if you're a woman and just gave birth to it. Trust me, people can do some crazy things with stem cells and test tubes and such nowadays, and there is a substantial possibility that you may be the victim of some kind of sinister prank. If the child is not yours, give it to the poor sucker you think it belongs to. Just guess if you have to. There is a one in 3 billion chance you will pick one of the right two people. Hey, those are better odds than you have of winning that stupid Subway Scrabble game you keep collecting game pieces for!

In the unfortunate event that the screaming devil-spawned poop machine in front of you is in fact yours, you're probably wondering, "Now what the hell am I going to call this thing?" Now, I do not have any young'uns of my own. You're probably thinking, "Good! I hope you never do, for society's sake." Yes, I can read minds. Nevertheless, I am now going to give you 6 cardinal rules that you must always follow when naming your offspring.

Here we go...

1) Watch out for bad combinations of names or initials
If your last name is Evans, for example, you might think David Owen Umberto Carlos Henry Evans sounds like a good name for your son. Not so fast - those initials spell out D-O-U-C-H-E! This is a trap that many people fall into. Everyone knows that it's the initials that really matter. For this reason, being named Donald Ian Charles Kirkpatrick is worse than being named Dick, or even Dick Butkus.

2) Don't name it after a celebrity

It may sound like a good idea to name your child Hannah Montana or Jared Fogle now, but remember that many of today's "hot" celebrities are eventually going to be seen as corny or behind the times, or even worse, will turn out to be pedophiles. Be thankful your parents didn't name you Michael Jackson or Gary Glitter.

3) Pick a name that fits in well with your values
Do you enjoy drinking Three Floyds Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout? If so, chances are a person who has half the same genes as you will also be genetically predisposed toward enjoying this fine beverage. In this case, Dark Lord could be an excellent choice for a name for your son. He'll thank you for it later, especially if he ends up being the ruler of an evil empire somewhere.

4) Look at the thing and determine which name describes it best
Here is a handy guide for how you should name a child based on his/her physical or personality traits:

BOYS:
Is he is very earnest and to the point? Go with Frank.
Did he throw up within an hour of being born? Go with Ralph.
Does he look tired, like he could use a cup of coffee? Go with Joe (or Joseph).
Are you a mobster hoping he'll follow you in a life of crime? Go with Conner or Connor. Rob (Robert) may also work if theft is the crime of choice. Jack may be good too if we're talking about petty theft. If you think he's more likely to be the victim of a crime, on the other hand, go with Mark.

Did he excrete solid or liquid waste somewhere other than a toilet shortly after being born? You must give him a constant reminder that the bathroom is the place for that kind of activity. Call him John.
Is he short and chubby? Easy. Go with Stumpy. If none of these really fit, I recommend Bobbert as a safe default choice.

GIRLS:
Does she look like she'd make a good lawyer? Go with Sue.
Was MadTV on the tube while she was being born? If so, go with Madison (Mad is on).
Do you want your daughter to rent out cars for a living? Go with Lisa (lease a), as in "Lisa brand new BMW 3-series for only $399 a month!" If you think she's more suited to "economy" cars than BMWs, however, you may want to call her Kia.
Are you already resigned to the fact that she's going to end up as a stripper just like her mother...and father? Stop living in denial and just go with Candi.
If none of these seem to work, definitely go with LaQuisha.

5) Think about how someone with such a name will be perceived in society
If you pick a name like Dexter or Mervin, let's face it, the kid is going to get beat up a lot in middle school. There is no avoiding it. On the other hand, the Johnny Cash song "A Boy Name d Sue" teaches us that a wimpy or just plain terrible name might help to toughen up a child, which will better prepare him/her to face the dangers of the future such as the Large Hadron Collider. It's your call.

6) Don't be a racist

Just because you're of a certain nationality doesn't mean you should name all your children names that are popular in your home country. In fact, you shouldn't. In order to avoid being perceived as a racist, you should name your children a variety of names from different ethnicities. Did you name your first-born son Kyle? That's nice, but do not pick another English/American name again - that is, of course, unless you're a despicable, cold-hearted racist. If you have 9 more children, for example, you might call them José (Spanish/Hispanic), Lakshmi (Indian), Vladimir (Russian), Mbufu (African), Ahmed (Middle Eastern), Running Bear (Native American), Xing Li (Chinese), Juergen (German), and Aniqmiuq (Inuit).

Well, that should solve one problem. Of course you are still stuck with a much bigger problem: the kid. Don't worry, it will all be over in 18 years...that is unless he decides to stick around in your basement living in a pile of pizza boxes and video game cartridges until he's 40. That's the breaks!

Word on the street #7: Imperative actions

2008-09-18T18:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes in life, you may want another person to perform a certain activity, such as sitting down or shutting up. In these instances, you may wonder how you can best inform them of this desire. In this case there are three things you need to consider:

1) Do I give a flying f*** about this person?
If not, offend away. Who cares what they think? Besides, being offensive is usually hilarious. That's the only reason people like Carlos Mencia have a job.
2) How quickly do I want this done?
If never would be a good time for you, go with #1 on the list. If right now is preferable, I suggest at least #5.
3) How bad of a mood am I in today?
If you are in a bad mood, it is highly therapeutic to take your anger out on other people. Did you just barely miss the bus home, making you wait 10 minutes for the next one and miss the first few minutes of "Wheel of Fortune?" Annoying occurrences like that usually give you free license to offend anyone you want for at least 24 hours.

Anyway, enough pussyfooting around...

10) _____ the f***___ before I (insert violent action here)!
Highly offensive, but undeniably effective. When you tell someone, "Eat the fucking veggies before I brutally murder your entire family!" you can bet that person will soon be shoveling that broccoli and carrots into his/her mouth like there's no tomorrow.

9) _____ the f*** ___, bitch!
The addition of "bitch" here adds an element of emphasis and condescension to your already powerful imperative. As you can imagine, an order of "Get the fuck out of my office, bitch!" is rather difficult to refuse.

8) _____ the f*** ___!
A bold one, as the dreaded f-word can strike fear into the strongest of men. For example, saying, "I made it to Candy Land first, now pay the f*** up!" is likely to get you allow you to collect your hard-earned board game winnings faster than, say, using #1 or 2 on this list.

7) _____ your ass ___!
A fairly strong command generally used when you would like to emphasize that some kind of movement needs to occur. For example, when playing with your child, you may choose to say something like, "Wah-wah! Stop crying, you little crybaby, and get your ass back on that tricycle!"

6) _____ the hell ___!
For example:
"Get the hell out of the lane so I can bowl!"
Rather bold. Shows your adversary who's the boss (NOTE: a nice, firm Danza slap will also accomplish this).

5) _____ ___.
Direct and to the point. No one can fault you for that...except me. Grow some balls, Nancy! At least throw an expletive in there or something.

4) Would you mind _____ing ___?
Polite, but in the event that the person does mind, it ain't getting done.
For example:
You: "Would you mind helping lift this 500 pound concrete block off my chest so I can breathe?"
Them: "Actually, yes I would mind. I'm jonesing for a McGriddle and only have 10 minutes to make it to McDonald's before they stop serving breakfast. Sorry. Good luck surviving, buddy."

3) Please _____ ___.
For the 63% of people in the world who don't give a rat's ass what you want them to do, "please" translates roughly as "don't." Thanks for coming, better luck next time.

2) Please _____ ___, if you would be so kind
Most people just aren't that kind.
For example:
You: "Hey, you in the biohazard suit! Please refrain from dumping your spent nuclear reactor fuel in our garbage can, if you would be so kind."
Them: "Sorry, unfortunately I'm a complete asshole, so it's not happening. Eat a dick."

1) Excuse me, is there any way you might be able to _____ ___, please? (Lame reason here). If not, no big deal. Thanks a lot.
A spineless coward's way of asking someone to do something. 99% of the time the person will refuse, and can you really blame them?
For example:
You: "Excuse me, is there any way you might be able to move your car, please? It's on my leg, which I believe is now broken. If not, no big deal. Thanks a lot."
Them: "Sure, no problem!" (backs up, then moves forward again so that car is once again crushing leg)
"There you go, chief! Have a good one!"

A tribute to "The BUFFALOg"

2008-09-16T21:16:00.000-07:00

As you all know, I have a soft spot in my heart for the city of Buffalo...and the animal called "buffalo"...and buffalo wing sauce...and the act of buffaloing. As most of you probably also know, there is another well-respected and highly-trafficked blog about Buffalo called "The BUFFALOg," written by Craig Howard, a real unsung everyday hero and true man of the people.

The fact is that blogging is a tough business and you are bound to make some friends and enemies along the way. The Buffalo Master, after repeatedly refusing my brilliant contributions to the science of the buffalo phenomenon, has now earned himself a rightful spot on the "enemies" list. I am rarely hostile, however - when I first contact a fellow blogger, I will generally extend the olive branch, attempt to create a peaceful and mutually beneficial rapport, and of course shamelessly self-promote in their "comments" section.

Now Craig Howard and I are "brothas from anotha motha," which is something we say in the ghetto that means "similar people." Craig is a celebrity who blogs about Buffalo. I am a celebrity who blogs about Buffalo (and buffalo and buffalo and buffalo). Craig lives in Buffalo. I have been to Buffalo once, have watched the Buffalo Bills on TV a few times, and enjoy buffalo wings. We roll with the same crew, more or less.

I attempted to contact Craig a couple months ago about promoting each other's blogs. Craig's lack of response indicated to me that he found this proposal unsuitable. Maybe he didn't think I had it in me to keep posting quality content. Maybe he thought I spazzed out a little too much when I first realized what a gigantic celebrity this blog had made me. Maybe he just doesn't think I'm Buffalo enough.

So, to show my support for "The BUFFALOg" and all that it stands for, I have added it to my highly exclusive blogroll (on right side of page) and will now comment on a few of Craig's highly informative and thought-provoking posts:

Dishonesty For Ideology's Sake: I wholeheartedly agree with Craig on this one. Dickipedia is not to be trusted. Its article on the buffalo phenomenon is an embarrassing disgrace to humanity and is misleading to the point where it is corrupting the fragile minds of our nation's youth. Shame on them.

Meaningless Rankings: Now here's a great one. Craig presents an excellent rebuttal to some douchebag's claim that "Buffalo is the second poorest city in America." He concedes that it is in fact true that Buffalo has roughly the same number of poor people as Boston, a much larger city, making Buffalo about 30% "poor" and Boston only about 13% "poor." Then he says that the reason Buffalo is considered so poor is not because there are too many poor people there, but rather that there are not enough non-poor people there. So all you non-poor people: move to Buffalo now! The city needs you! Think of all the delicious wings you could be eating!

In case the non-poor people are too selfish to move to Buffalo to bring that number down, I have another solution: simply redraw the city limits to remove some of the poorer areas of Buffalo and include some of the richer outlying areas. Take this, for example:

Problem solved.

A Strange Tern Of Events (Sorry, I Couldn't Resist): This is a fascinating post that explores some important controversial topics while also making clever puns such as "tern" (the bird) instead of "turn." Quite the masterpiece. Let me just state on the record that I have no idea what a "petard" is, and I would have no clue what "schadenfreude" was either if a lady friend of mine hadn't dragged me to watch Avenue Q, which surprisingly wasn't not too unbad (I worded it that way because I'm a real man and would never admit that I actually enjoyed a musical theater production). So while the masterful use of vocabulary used in this post probably confuses 99% of Craig's audience, he brings up an important point: we might as well say "F*** it," because there will never be peace between the U.S. and Canada, and hell, none of us even want to go up and visit that country anyway. Freezing cold, rampant moose-humping, fries with gravy, and Celine Dion, all in one place? No thanks. Buffalo doesn't need any "Peace Bridge" - let the war rage on!

So there it is, Craig. Even though I currently set up shop in the Bay Area, rest assured that I BLEED BUFFALO BROWN!!! The history books will remember you and me as heroes from the same mold: tireless crusaders willing to sacrifice everything we have for the glory of Buffalo. The fact is that in this business you're either with someone or against them. Pick the right side here, buddy - if you don't do it for me, do it for Buffalo!

Stuff indie bands like (#4)

2008-09-14T21:41:00.000-07:00

For the fourth part in our series of blatant ripoffs, I'm going to talk about a few things that indie music "artists" like. Note that I do not actually consider music to be art - I'm just using the word "artist" because that's the standard convention.

Avoiding publicity

Indie bands hate publicity, because once everyone knows about them, they become "too mainstream," and their original founders call them "sellouts" and no longer listen to them.

Speaking of which, CHECK OUT THIS AWESOME BAND CALLED "THE MONKEY SHOW." EVERYONE SHOULD LISTEN TO THE MONKEY SHOW AND CHECK OUT THEIR WEBSITE. THEIR SONGS TOTALLY BELONG ON THE BILLBOARD TOP 200 SINGLES CHART! MOVE OVER, MILEY CYRUS! HERE COMES THE MONKEY SHOW!!! OH YEAH!!!

NOTE: For the record, I have no clue who The Monkey Show is and have never listened to any of their songs. They were just the victims of an unfortunately high Google Search ranking. Sorry for completely demolishing your street cred, guys. I just wanted to prove a point. Your latest album will probably now go platinum, which will totally ruin your career.

Knowing more about indie music than you do

If you try to talk to an indie artist, chances are it will go something like this:

You: "Heard the new Black Keys album? Pretty awesome stuff."

Indie artist: "Yeah, I guess. I used to like them about 3 years ago before they sold out. Totally mainstream now."

You: "Yeah...who are you into nowadays?"

Indie artist: "The Burgundy Lawn Gnomes and PGW!? have some good stuff out."

You: "Hmm...can't say I know who those bands are."

Indie artist: "Oh, you wouldn't. They've only been around for a couple weeks or so. I was actually the only person who went to the PGW!? show on Friday. It was excellent. Just wait a couple years - they're going to be totally not huge."

A true indie rocker will never end a conversation before he/she has pulled out the name of a band that the other person has never heard of. Also expect the person to call any band you name "too mainstream" or "sellouts" and to brag about how small the crowd was at a recent concert that he/she attended.

Monkey shows

Nobody knows why, but indie music artists eat this stuff up like Al Gore eats up bacon-wrapped chili cheese dogs. Indie artists sometimes even like monkey shows enough to consider naming their bands after them. Maybe it's because when you're hopped up on all kinds of mind-altering drugs, there is nothing as awesome as watching a monkey wearing a cowboy hat ride a dog around a racetrack. I mean nothing.

Bad news for Kim Jong-Il

2008-09-12T17:56:00.000-07:00

Some people take out their anger in reasonable ways, such as or kicking and punching their beds in a hysterical fit or yelling a stream of obscenities at the top of their lungs in a public place. Others take out their anger in less appropriate ways, such as throwing furniture around the room or pimp-slapping llamas at the petting zoo. My rival, Jon of "Bison That," takes the latter route: he punches Kim Jong-Il in the face.

I don't know if this will happen every time Jon gets out-buffaloed, but I suspect it will. If so, then Kim, I'm sorry to say this, but you are cruisin' for a bruisin'.

I admit I have been rather dismissive of bison in the past, so I'd like to bring up an important point about them now. Contrary to popular belief, "bison" is a fairly versatile word. It doesn't hold a candle to "buffalo," mind you, but it compares favorably to more than 99% of words in the English language. "Bison" can refer not only to the animal, but also to the town of Bison, South Dakota (see right), the mascot of many athletic teams (including the Bucknell Bison), and a disgusting verb, defined by Wikipedia as the following:

Bison - (verb; slang; vulgar) To insert all male genitalia, including penis and testicles, into another human orifice. Often used in derogatory context. Example: "Go bison yourself."

Furthermore, as with "buffalo," the plural form of "bison" is exactly the same as the singular form. So the sentence "Bison bison Bison bison Bison bison Bison bison Bison bison Bison bison Bison bison." is perfectly legitimate and could mean "Bison from Bison, SD that bison from Bison, SD bison Bucknell-style in turn bison Bucknell-style other bison from Bison, SD that bison from Bison, SD bison Bucknell-style." You might call this the "bison phenomenon," although in my opinion it is not all that phenomenal.

So Jon of "Bison That" does have a point, sort of. He has not yet attempted to express this point on his blog, but if he were to do so, it might make sense.

Jon's return from North Korea and the awakening of his blog deserved some kind of response. So in a rather bold move to show Jon who is the Buffalo Master in this rivalry, I went ahead and created the bumper sticker below and stuck it on my car as well as every vehicle in the parking lot of the K-Mart in Niagara Falls, NY.

Note that the sticker was originally going to read: "My Buffalo buffalo Bison bisoned your Bison bison." However in the end I chose to keep it clean and go with the G-rated slogan that doesn't involve a disgusting sexual act. Even in the highly, HIGHLY unlikely event that I lose the Battle of the Buffalo, I will never relinquish the moral high ground.

So if you're keeping score at home, you can tally up another point for "Buffalo This." Sorry, Kim, today is not your lucky day.

Particle colliders give me a "large hadron"

2008-09-10T18:19:00.000-07:00

So, if you haven't checked your calendar recently, today is September 10, which means that at 7:32 Greenwich Mean Time, they switched on the ol' LHC, which if you haven't religiously followed this blog or read particle physics journals over the last few months (and if you haven't, come on, what's wrong with you?) stands for the Large Hadron Collider. That means this huge atom smasher has now begun firing up for its first attempts to ~~destroy the earth~~ find out what matter is made of.

So, what is it, you may ask?

Well, "it" is a gender-neutral pronoun used in the English language to refer to a previously specified object - but that's not important right now. Let's stay on topic.

The Large Hadron Collider, on the other hand, is a few things:

1) A 17-mile-diameter series of tubes, a lot like the internet, except it's used to smash tiny atoms and subatomic particles together at relativistic (near-light) speeds.

2) The name of a porn video I saw a long time ago, I think. It "had Ron" Jeremy in it (zing!). Oh wait...no...that was "Large Hardon Collider."

3) Something that is fairly likely to destroy the world, and even has a small probability of destroying the entire universe. Oh, yeaahh!

Below are a couple of photos of this bad boy. On the left is an aerial shot of the border between France and Switzerland where the big ring is located. On the right is the belly of the beast itself: a big ol' tube lined with supercooled superconducting magnets used to accelerate protons, lead ions, and the like to ridiculous speeds.

Eventually, this huge device will be used to cause "large hadrons," which are actually extremely small, to collide at near light speed. When these collide, the hadrons should break apart, releasing particles, energy, and other things that the LHC will try to detect. One of the main theories physicists are aiming to prove is string theory: the idea that matter, light, gravity, and everything else is composed of subatomic strings that vibrate in 11 dimensions. Duh! Do we really need an experiment to tell us that? What else could all that stuff be composed of other than 11th dimension vibrating strings, Captain Obvious?

Anyway, when the collisions start happening, the scene at the LHC might look something like this:

What will the LHC find? Likely candidates include the Higgs boson (which may or may not be the reason matter has mass), supersymmetry (which would give us insight into the validity of many quantum theories), dark matter, micro black holes, new subatomic particles, and other things nobody guessed. Of course, despite all the theories, nobody really knows exactly what will come out of the LHC. For all we know, it might even produce some of this crazy stuff.

The ridiculous thing is that a lot of scientists actually believe the LHC could produce micro black holes. This is no reason to worry however, they say, because these black holes will theoretically evaporate via Hawking radiation before they can grow to any considerable size. Theoretically.

Otherwise, something like the following might play out...

Scientist 1: "Oh no! It's a black hole!"
Scientist 2: "Not to worry. It's only a micro black hole. It's not stable and will evaporate in less than a second. Even if it doesn't evaporate, it will escape the earth's gravity. Even if it doesn't escape the earth's gravity, it will take millions of years to accrete enough matter to kill us. M'kay?"

Scientist 1: "Got it. Let's keep smashing hadrons."

Scientist 1: "Oh no! The black hole got bigger! It's going to kill us all!"
Scientist 2: "Whoopsy daisy! Looks like I put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. I was hopped up on a bunch of Vicodin for my bad back the week I came up with those formulas. My bad!"
Scientist 1: "I'm going to kill you!"
Scientist 2: "No, the black hole is going to kill me, and it's also going to kill you. Sorry about that, chief!"

Scientist 1: "Stop calling me 'chief,' guy!"

Scientist 2: "Stop calling me 'guy,' chief!"
(black hole consumes the entire planet)

Alien 1: "Awesome! The poor bastards never saw it coming!"
Alien 2: "Come on, dude. That ended exactly the same way as 'Large Hadron Collider 16: Planet Gzyxqiofn of the Crab Nebula.' So unoriginal. This series is really starting to circle the drain."

Alien 1: "Well, so much for Earth. I say good riddance - that place was a real dump. I'm going to miss 'Buffalo This' though."

Alien 2: "I'm not. That guy was an idiot. Hey, let's get out of here before that black hole spaghettifies us."

Alien 1: "Oh yeah, good idea."

Now I've already heard people say things today along the lines of, "Phew, we're still here! Looks like there was no reason to worry about the LHC after all!" Not so fast, Einstein. It wasn't simply turning on the machine that was supposed to destroy the earth. They haven't even started colliding particles yet and won't begin doing so for at least a few weeks. Even then, they won't be using the full power of the machine; the collisions will get increasingly powerful through the rest of 2008 and into 2009. Every time the power is ramped up, we enter a new and uncharted realm of particle collisions with uncertain consequences. In the case of a strangelet disaster or vacuum metastability event, we'll find out that something has gone wrong immediately, and by "find out that something has gone wrong," I really mean "all die." In the case of a stable micro black hole that gradually eats away at the earth, we may not know about it for months, years, or much longer. So it could be a long, long time before we conclusively know the answer to the big question: Will the LHC kill us all? If it's any comfort to you, I've got $500 that says it doesn't.

Welcome to the jungle.

Word on the street #6: Sexual intercourse

2008-09-09T17:48:00.000-07:00

Now here's a real controversial topic. The debate rages on regarding whether people should have sexual intercourse. My opinion is that they should not, ever. However if you do choose to take part in this vile, despicable activity, chances are you will find yourself in the following scenario:

You are presented with the person with whom you would like to engage in this activity. You believe he/she may be amenable to said action. You would like to express your desire to place your pee-pee in her hoo-hoo (or the other way around if you are female). However, you don't know exactly how to describe exactly what you would like to do with that person.

Whatever you do, do not sit there stammering and stuttering like an idiot looking for the right word. Simply excuse yourself briefly and go log on to your computer to check "Buffalo This" for some timely advice.

10) Hop up on top and start jiggy-jiggy-jerkin'
Comes from Juvenile's "Slow Motion." Not only is this...um...juvenile, but it also suggests that your in-bed technique is not exactly top-notch. Most women (and men for that matter) will not enjoy it too much if all you do is "jiggy-jiggy-jerk" on top of them.

9) Chuck your junk in her/Beat it up
I understand that most guys and their "crew" or "posse" usually use these manly terms when discussing what they would like to do to a girl. Women, on the other hand, do not appreciate these terms quite as much. Don't say I didn't warn you.

8) Slip her the sausage
Similar to the ones above, but not quite as bad because it suggests a tasty food item.

7) Fuck
Usually I censor this word to make this blog appropriate for people of all ages and Mormons. Here, however, I have a fucking point to make. "Fuck" is concise and to the point, but it's also fucking offensive as fuck. You probably shouldn't fucking use it.

6) Pee in her butt
A couple points for the attempt at humor. Unfortunately though, some people are grossed out by any mention of pee in a sexual context due to the recent R. Kelly scandals involving golden showers. Nice try, but no cigar.

5) Screw
Ah, Jimmy Buffett's old standby: "Why don't we get drunk and screw?" If you want to increase the odds of getting your "jimmy" to the "buffet" though, you can probably do better than this.

4) Do the wild thing
Careful there, tiger. When you say "do the wild thing," many people will misinterpret this as meaning you would like to have intercourse with Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn from "Major League," a.k.a. Charlie Sheen. Since Charlie Sheen is widely perceived as a man-whore, you may be seen as trashy.

3) Get jiggy wit' it
If you honestly think that a line from a Will Smith song is going to get you laid, you probably should not be allowed to procreate.

2) Get it on
Who are you, Marvin Gaye? If not, the cheese factor is off the charts with this one.

1) Make love
Seriously, dude, the only time you should ever use this phrase is when you're singing along with Boyz II Men. Most women will laugh hysterically at any guy who uses this.

The Buffalo Phenomenon, in poorly drawn pictures

2008-09-07T20:35:00.000-07:00

Word on the street #5: The guy who takes your trash out

2008-09-05T18:07:00.000-07:00

The brave men and women who collect our garbage toil day in and day out for very little respect. Their job is one of the most important in our society, as without them we would be wallowing in filth all day. It is, after all, our cleanliness that separates us human beings from the DAMNED DIRTY APES! So when you interact with one of your waste-aggregating friends, it's important to refer to his or her job in the correct manner. So here are 10 such terms, listed from most offensive to least, or in other words, from the one that will make the G-man want to throw you in the landfill (10) to the one that will make him/her rather happy to sort your recyclables for you (1).

10) Shit shoveler
If you say this around a woman over the age of 60, expect an exclamation of "Well I never!" to follow. "Golden girls" (i.e. old hags) were brought up to respect the brave men and women who shovel their shit into a truck every day and would never refer to them by such a vile (yet undeniably accurate) term.

9) Trash man
"Trash" is a much less sophisticated word than "garbage" and is often used to refer to girls from south Jersey (the place shown in the photo on the right). Not a pretty picture.

8) Garbage man
The same term is used for the guy who cleans up the "trash" at the club just before closing time and goes home with whatever he can get. Nobody wants to be that guy.

7) Dustman
This British import isn't terrible, but it minimizes the hard labor that garbage men do by calling trash "dust." Picking up dust is not very hard, but trash can be a real bitch sometimes.

6) Hector the Collector
Most garbage guys will appreciate this clever attempt at humor. However, recent studies have shown that 14.8% of garbage collectors are not named Hector, so in these rare cases you might cause some confusion.

5) Garbo
Do you want people to think you're Australian? Me neither. Whenever someone uses this term, expect the next sentence out of his/her mouth to be "G'day mate, let's put another shrimp on the barbie!"

4) Refuse collector
Refuse is always a nice word for trash, as in, "I refuse to ingest this year-old maggot-infested beef carcass, therefore I believe I shall place it in the dustbin." Makes you sound high-class.

3) Collection agent
Not bad, but unfortunately the same term is used for the douchebag who hounds you about your overdue credit card bills.

2) Waste management specialist
Sounds like a highly skilled job. You'll earn some brownie points with this one.

1) Sanitation engineer
Garbage collection requires a lot of mental horsepower. These people often find themselves constructing SolidWorks simulations and writing Matlab procedures to calculate the optimal way to dump the trash into the truck. If they're not engineers, nobody is (except people who drive trains of course).

Bloggin' ain't easy

2008-09-04T20:20:00.000-07:00

500 hits. Well, almost 600 actually. Wow, seems like just a few weeks ago we were celebrating the big 1-0-0. It's only a matter of time before that number reaches 100,000,000,000. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Blogging is tiring - it's not easy coming up with new stupid stuff to talk about every day or two. Now I know how the screenplay writers for all those Rob Schneider movies must have felt!

Nope, bloggin' ain't easy. Makes pimping look like a regular walk in the park! (Believe me, I would know. What do you think my day job is?)

Still, despite publicity efforts often bordering on desperate, "Buffalo This" has to my knowledge failed to make it on a single blogroll. Not a single blog in the vast, almighty blogosphere has deemed this blog worthy of a small link on the right side of its main page, despite my efforts to establish a rapport (read: incessantly annoy) the writers of related blogs. A more detailed post about this tragedy may be coming in the next few days.

Still, 500 hits ain't too bad. To see how we got there, let's take a look back at a timeline showing the key events in the long, storied history of this blog:

10,000 B.C.
Modern-day buffalo evolve (or are "intelligently designed," depending on what you believe) in North America.

1801
The city of Buffalo, New York is founded. This name is chosen over "Beau Fleuve," representing the first of many important symbolic victories over the despicable French.

10/3/1964
Teressa Bellisimo invents buffalo wings at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, NY. All other foods are declared officially obsolete.

4/11/1983
The stork drops me at an unfortunate couple's doorstep. A chain of events is set in motion that eventually causes a ridiculously stupid, sophomoric - well actually more like freshmanic - blog to come into existence roughly 25 years later.

7/8/2008
"Buffalo This" is born. I realize I'm now a celebrity and sort of freak out. Come on - not like you wouldn't do the same.

7/9/2008
First post on the buffalo phenomenon. Critics are astounded by its complexity yet simplicity.

7/21/2008
After a brilliant flash of inspiration, I expand the buffalo phenomenon to an unprecedented 18 buffaloes. The world sits open-mouthed in awe for a few minutes.

7/28/2008
"Buffalo This" gets its 100th hit and we throw a huge bash to celebrate. We play Edward 40-hands and Regis Philbin and I get absolutely plastered.

8/3/2008
As a publicity stunt, I bet Joe Keane $500 that the Large Hadron Collider will not destroy the earth on longbets.org.

8/6/2008
"Bison That" emerges as a rival to "Buffalo This." So far it has turned out to be a real flash in the pan.

8/7/2008
Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and I release a single called "Buffalo" to the tune of "Kokomo." It rockets to the top of the charts in 15 different countries.

8/17/2008
"Buffalo This" officially moves to Buffalo, NY, but keeps its real physical location in the San Francisco Bay Area.

9/2/2008
Someone clicks on a link somewhere, becoming the 500th person to visit this site and probably about the 495th to regret doing so within about 10 seconds. In an unrelated event, I get a concussion while playing softball due to a poorly placed sprinkler - as if the posts on this blog needed to get any less intelligent.

Anyway, thanks to all of the billions - ok, hundreds - of people who took the time out of their busy days of wasting time on the internet to check out this blog! In the rare event that you didn't find what you read too offensively idiotic, don't forget to vote for "Buffalo This" on humor-blogs.com!

What's in a name?

2008-09-02T21:20:00.000-07:00

Let me first acknowledge that this post is not what you think. By that I mean that I am not going to write about names with "what" in them. If that's "what" you really want (clever pun once again), I'll give you one: Powhatan. Happy now?

Ok, for those of you who are still with us, I am now going to talk about companies with unfortunate names; names that make you ask yourself, in the words of Jerry Seinfeld, "Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one?" Here we go...

The general public is pretty stupid, so what better way to market your tech company to them than by saying, "Hey! We're not that smart either!" As you probably know, Mensa is a society of geniuses, but who wants all those smarty-pantses writing their software code? Maybe Microsoft or Google, but not Nomensa! Their tech solutions are so mediocre, you could probably do better yourself!

An Italian coffee company. Sounds innocent enough at first to most people. But as those of you who speak Italian might know, "sega" is a slang word for masturbation and "freddo" means cold. Cold masturbation. Now it's an indisputable fact that nothing hits the spot after a nice long whack-off session in a walk-in freezer than a hot cup of joe. This is probably what the marketing people were thinking about when they chose this name. But on the other hand, calling it "Segafredo" begs the obvious question: what exactly are they putting in the coffee?

...because the other ideas that came up at the meeting to choose a company name were "InternationalRipoff.com" and "WorldwideScamOperation.org," and nobody would ever trust a company with either of those names!

If you're the owner of a bank, one thing you probably do not enjoy much is being robbed. Still, these rocket scientists came up with the excellent idea of choosing a name that sounds and looks almost exactly the same as "rob a bank." So if you're a criminal in Europe and are wondering which type of crime you should commit today, bingo - there's your answer! Rumor has it that this bank is a leading provider of small business loans, investing in such promising start-ups as Stick-Me-Up Convenience Stores, Adverse Side Effects Pharmaceuticals, and of course, Rent-a-Wreck.

And finally...
Pen island. Web site: http://www.penisland.com/. A retailer of fine writing implements. You can imagine how it would turn out if these guys did a study to determine the demographics of their customers:
Employee A: "Wow, according to this data, it looks like 64% of people who visited our website last month were homosexual men."
Employee B: "Really? Must be that pink feathered singing Liza Minnelli pen I designed. I told you it would be a big hit!"

New Olympic sports

2008-08-31T13:11:00.000-07:00

You've probably heard the disappointing news that baseball and softball will not be included in the 2012 London Olympic Games. I mean, why should they? The two sports are only popular in a tiny corner of the world that includes the U.S., Venezuela, South Korea, Australia, Japan, and Cuba (among others). It's not like they have anywhere near the fan base of real Olympic sports like fencing, dressage, or trampoline-jumping.

The question remains: what sport(s) should we add to the Olympic schedule to replace these deletions?

Wonder no more. Here are my top five candidates for new Olympic sports that athletes from all over the world can enjoy:

5) Greased watermelon
Water polo is for sissies. Real athletes would much rather use something that weighs 20 lbs, is more slippery than a banana peel on a wet hockey rink, and always carries the risk of exploding if it hits your head. I'm talking of course about the great game known as "greased watermelon." The fact that this is not already in the Olympics is a preposterous travesty that must be corrected immediately.

4) Beer mile

The #1 complaint about Olympic track events is that they're very poor tests of an athlete's drinking ability. Problem solved! The other great thing about the beer mile is that it allows the U.S. to have a chance to finally beat the Jamaicans in a running event. I mean it's not the weed mile!

3) Bog snorkelling
What Michael Phelps did in Beijing is nothing compared to the daily struggles of the brave men and women who crawl through sludge, dodging salamanders, old tires, rusted beer cans, and mosquito larvae for 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. That's right, I'm talking about the world's elite bog snorkellers. It's about time we recognize these real athletes on the global stage.

2) Fantasy Olympics

No country had a more heartbreaking showing in Beijing than Greece, who despite having invented the Olympics ended up with a grand total of zero gold medals. But hey, if you don't have enough athletic talent to actually win a gold medal, maybe you can be the best at picking who does win. That's where Fantasy Olympics come in. Similarly to Fantasy Baseball/Football, each country picks a team of various Olympic teams (the Chinese women's gymnastic team, the Kyrgyzstani men's trampoline team, the Finnish men's bog snorkeling team, etc). Whoever picks the most medallists wins. Even poor, pitifully unathletic Greece has a chance at this one!

1) Octopus wrestling

Because Greco-Roman wrestling is a little too much sweaty man-on-man action for most people to stomach. Sweaty man-on-octopus action is much better!

Word on the street #4: Your friends

2008-08-29T17:08:00.000-07:00

The most annoying thing by far about having friends is never knowing what you should call them. You obviously can't call them by their names, because that would sound way too goofy, especially if the person's name is something that's already extremely goofy, like Phineas, Ralphina, or any name a celebrity has ever named a child. This may make social situations extremely awkward, and if you choose the wrong word, people may seriously reevaluate their prior perceptions of your douchitude on their subconscious mental douche-o-meter. So here we go with ten names you can call your friends, rated from most douche-tacular (10) to least (1).

10) Broski

"Hey broski, two Heinekens!" This one may work in jest, but calling someone this in seriousness has been a cardinal sin since it was used in the YouTube phenomenon "My New Haircut."

9) Chief

Is your friend the leader of a Native American tribe or Boy Scout troop? If not, avoid using this one. It was also used in "My New Haircut" in the sentence "Not now chief, I'm in the f***ing zone!"

8) Brah

It is not a good idea to call your friend by the same name as a breast-holding device, even if you think that he is the type of person who would enjoy holding breasts all day (i.e. any straight male).

7) Chieferino/Sport-o

It is a good idea to call your son these names. Your friend, not so much.

6) Guy

Rather impersonal and often used by Canadians. May be a little off-putting.

5) Ace

This was a good one before"The Ambiguously Gay Duo" came out. Now it can be a real land mine if your friend is uncomfortable with his sexuality. May be a decent choice for a tennis player however.

4) Hoss

This one is tricky. It is a great one to use in the context of a manly activity, such as stuffing your face ("You gonna eat that whole steak, hoss?") or an athletic activity ("Show 'em what you've got up there, hoss!"). However, you must make sure to never use this term to refer to a woman, or anyone with horse-like features, such as John Kerry.

3) Tiger

Not a terrible one to use. Your friend may actually think you're complimenting his/her golf game.

2) Buddy

Boring and unoriginal, but a safe play. Think of it as the equivalent of a sacrifice bunt in baseball: it'll advance the runner, but definitely won't blow the game wide open in your favor.

1) Playa

Always a good call, as it implies that your friend is a master of manipulating the opposite sex. The ultimate compliment.

How to be famous

2008-08-27T19:23:00.000-07:00

As an A-list celebrity, I often have people asking me what they can do to become extremely famous like I am. The surprising fact is that it's not that difficult, you just need to know the tricks. What I am about to reveal to you are five well-kept secrets of the A-list elite that have been passed down from generation to generation. With the help of this knowledge, you can be the talk of the nation in no time.

1) Declare that you're back, even though you were never really there in the first place
This trick was flawlessly executed by the Backstreet Boys. Despite the fact that nobody had ever heard of them, they released the song "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)." At this point, everyone realized that they must have missed the Backstreet Boys their first time around, so they pretended to like them because according to the song, everybody else did. Even better, the song was addressed to "everybody," so anybody who didn't know who the Backstreet Boys were pretended that they did so they wouldn't look really clueless. A brilliant strategy.

2) Be really, really terrible at something and make sure everyone knows it
Ever hear of this guy (click on the link, dummy)? He is probably the worst singer in the history of the universe and a terrible dancer to boot. Still, everyone in America knew who he was and he got a record deal. Not everyone can be talented, but everyone can be really, really, ridiculously un-talented.

Here are a few ideas on how you might be able to execute this trick:

-Become the CEO of a major pharmaceutical corporation. Hold a press conference and state that you are "this close" (holding thumb and forefinger exactly one centimeter apart) to finding the cure for every type of cancer. Then hold another press conference a month later saying that you read the memo wrong and instead of "cancer" it said "canker sores"...and the drug has the undesirable side effect of killing everyone who takes it. Follow by saying that you project a 90% decrease in sales this quarter and expect a lot of people to sue the company because all of your products are crap. This little stunt will likely get you to the front page of the Wall Street Journal and maybe even an appearance on "The Colbert Report" if you play your cards right.

-Sign a $20 million contract with the New York Yankees and then strike out every time you get up and make at least 10 fielding errors every game for the entire season. They will have paid too much for you to be able to justify benching you. To increase your media exposure, bad-mouth your teammates at every opportunity.

-Convince the NFL to allow you to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show. Get a bad microphone that screeches like nails on a chalkboard. Sing offensively off-key. Rip off a clothing article that reveals someone's breast. Stop suddenly in the middle of a song and declare, "Whoops, I forgot the words!" People love bad performances, and 100 million or so people will be watching. Jackpot.

3) Imitate other celebrities
This really applies to any goal. Want to be a great swimmer? Easy - just do things exactly like Michael Phelps does. Imitate his form and swim the 100 meter freestyle in 47 seconds. Easy Olympic gold medal right there. Want to be a great poker player? Learn the tricks of Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan and you'll be taking home the big World Series prize in no time. Want to be great at being famous? Just do what those who have succeeded in becoming famous do.

For example:

-Keep people guessing what you're going to do next. Rapidly gain and lose weight. Do as many different drugs as possible and check in and out of rehab at least once a month. Make sure your blood alcohol level is at least .15 every time you drive.

-Adopt a bunch of kids from all over the world and name them the most ridiculous names possible.

-Send photos of yourself walking around Hollywood or Manhattan's West Village to Us Weekly every week. Appear with other celebrities if possible.

-Drive a Prius.

4) Come up with a catch phrase
This has worked like a charm for many people in the past. Take for example "Hasta la vista, baby" (Arnold Schwarzenegger), "Suck it, Trebek!" (Sean Connery), and "It's Britney, bitch" (Britney Spears). These people would never have become famous had they not come up with these catch phrases. When deciding which catch phrase to pick, remember to keep it brief, and the more controversial or offensive, the better. Something like "Buffalo this, motherf***ers!" might be a good choice.

5) Write an awesome blog This will rocket you straight to the top of the A-list. Trust me.

Upcoming mergers

2008-08-26T17:56:00.000-07:00

These days, everyone's trying to join forces and consolidate their operations. With all this mergin' going on, you may wonder what the e-"mergin'"-cy is (zing!). The answer lies in an old proverb: "United we stand, divided we conquer"...or something like that. Like I told you before, the amount of matter is all that matters. Get big or get the hell out.

So for your edification, here is a handy guide to keep you on top of five major upcoming mergers in the world:

1) Country music and hip-hop
Pop quiz, hotshot! Try to classify the following lyrics as country or hip-hop/R&B:
a) "If you wanna go on back to the holler, holler back!"
b) "That honky tonk badonkadonk..."
c) "Country girls are the kind of girl they like."
d) "What you think we live on a farm?"

Believe it or not, lyrics (a) and (b) are from country songs, specifically The Lost Trailers - "Holler Back" and Trace Adkins - "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk," despite the hardcore ghetto slang. On the other hand, lyrics (c) and (d) are hip-hop/R&B songs: Destiny's Child - "Soldier" and Nelly - "Midwest Swing," despite the rural references. The line between country music and hip-hop has always been a fuzzy one: popular artists such as Kid Rock, Ja Rule, Alan Jackson, Snoop Dogg, George Strait, and Kenny G have always been difficult to categorize as one or the other. The fact is that these two similar genres are gradually merging into one, making it nearly impossible to determine when you're extremely plastered whether you're in a trendy hip-hop nightclub in New York or a backwater honky tonk in rural Mississippi.

2) Your car and the rest of the traffic when you're getting onto the highway
This is one time when I strongly recommend you merge. Remember to check your mirrors and look over your shoulder. Never, EVER forget that the cars already traveling on the highway have the right of way!

3) Vegetables, spices, and cheeses
Every day you hear of a new merger between food products. Four cheese pizza, V8 juice, sixteen spice chicken, and so on. Eventually there's only going to be one vegetable conglomerate, one spice conglomerate, and one super Frankencheese. Then those three will merge into one food. Imagine how painful life will be when you can no longer pick from an artisanal cheese selection at The French Laundry every weekend, or when your personal chef lacks a few of of the ingredients needed to prepare you world-class cuisine every day in your oceanfront Malibu mansion. Oh, the humanity! We are looking at a boring, tasteless future if we allow this disturbing trend to continue.

4) General Motors-InBev-Verizon-Google-McDonald's-Revlon-Gillette
This super-merger combines almost all your daily needs into one mega-conglomerate. Why waste time talking on your phone, surfing the internet, eating, and applying make-up/shaving separately when you can do them all at the same time, in your car! And have a few beers while you're at it! However, make sure you merge onto the highway correctly - I recommend using your knees to control the steering wheel.

5) Humans and computers
We're all going to become human-computer hybrids within 30 years or so, according to some leading futurists. That means we are all going to talk and dance and play beirut/beer pong exactly like robots and have names like Norbotron870B. This is good news if you're a nerd and bad news if you fall into one of the following categories: jocks, skaters, posers, thugs, or cheerleaders. No word yet on the projected effect on goths or preps. All I know is one thing - if I'm going to become a hybrid, I hope it's not one of those god-awful Toyota Priuses!

Word on the street #3: Unattractive people

2008-08-24T13:00:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you see someone who is just straight up uuuuuuggggly. Later on, you may try to describe to a friend that person's appearance, saying something like, "Dude, I'm telling you, this person I saw was ugly." People are curious by nature, however, and as such, your friend may wonder exactly how ugly this person was, and in what way. Are we talking Frankenstein or Linda Tripp? In this case, you may be at a loss for words. As usual, I am here to the rescue with a guide to the different ways you can describe a person's physical unattractiveness, listed from most offensive to least.

10) Tore up from the floor up
This is the worst, because it eliminates the possibility that any part of the person is attractive or even acceptable, including their ankles, elbows, and ears.

9) Weather-beaten
Ever seen a picture of someone who's just survived a major hurricane or tsunami? They don't exactly look like models at a fashion show, that's for sure.

8) Fell out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down
Means the person was born ugly and then it was all downhill from there. Combines the worst of both worlds: bad genes and a bad environment.

7) Jacked up
Implies that it's just wrong that any person is that ugly, a slap on the face of God himself. Similar in offensiveness to "train wreck."

6) Broke down
Not good for a car, even worse for a person. Conjures up the image of a ratty rusted-out 1968 VW Beetle sitting in some dirty hippie's front yard.

5) Wrecked/Busted/Beat
These all fall into the category of something that's not working properly or has been damaged. Not the most flattering way to describe a person.

4) Haggard
A bad one, but you can often deftly play it off by saying, "Oh, I meant to say she looks like Mariska Hargitay...from Law & Order: SVU." You know, because "Hargitay" sounds like "haggard-y."

3) Penny piece
Just like a "dime piece" refers to a girl who gets a perfect 10 out of 10, a "penny piece" refers to one who gets a totally imperfect 1 out of 10. Would be more offensive if more people knew what it meant.

2) Struggling
This one depends on how you say it. If you drag out the "u," as in "Damn, she's struuuuuuuugglin'!" it might move up the list a few spots.

1) Great personality
The most polite way to avoid calling someone "ugly" is to complement some other aspect of that person, usually their personality. If you need to describe someone and the only adjectives you can think of are the ones listed above, the "great personality" route is an old standby that always does the trick. Please note that it does not matter if this person's personality is really that great, you just want to take the focus off his/her looks.

Stuff Hippies Like (#3)

2008-08-22T18:23:00.000-07:00

The third part in our series of blatant rip-offs is dedicated to dirty, stinking, tree-hugging, acid-dropping hippies. Here we go with some stuff hippies like...

Weed
This is not news to anyone. Let's move on.

Long, weird names

Do you have a friend who is dirty, smokes a lot of pot, wears tye-dye, is vegan, lives in San Francisco, and is named Rainbow Sunflower Stevenson-McGee-Smith-Jones? If so, there is a decent chance that that person is in fact a hippie. The truth is that hippies love long names and names that have to do with peaceful natural phenomena. Flowers, birds, rainbows, and characters from "My Little Ponies" are popular choices. Hurricanes, tsunamis, and supervolcanoes are not. Hippies also will always hyphenate last names because they do not want to conform to the sexist convention of just taking the father's last name. If hippies are not allowed to interbreed with other types of human beings (which they rarely do anyway), the string of hyphenated last names will grow exponentially with each generation and cannot be stopped. Seventh- and eighth-generation hippies often have trouble in school, not just because they smoke a lot of pot, but also because it may take them up to half of the time alotted for a test simply to write their names at the top.

Living in a van down by the river

If there are two things hippies love (besides weed), it's spray-painted, bumper sticker covered vans and being close to nature. The threats of Matt Foley, motivational speaker would sound like the dream life to a hardcore hippie: a peaceful, natural setting where he/she can spend his/her days in a hallucinogenic haze playing Grateful Dead songs on the guitar and avoiding the evils of society such as red meat, urban sprawl, and productive activities.

Pointing out problems, but not actually doing anything about them

If you know a hippie, he/she is probably always saying things like, "Man, we need to stop the corporations. They're taking over the world." or, "Dude, global warming is out of control. We've got to, like, stop polluting the air and stuff." or, "War is bad, man. We need to get out of the Middle East and just let them, like, go with the flow."

Statements like these may lead you to believe that hippies are ardent social activists. This used to be the case in the 1960's, but today's hippies are a different breed. A typical day for a modern-day hippie might go something like this:

11am: Wake up, smoke a bowl.

12pm: Eat a bag of Doritos.

12:30pm: Phish jam session on the guitar.

2pm: Drip acid, then sit on a rock and stare out over the river for 6 hours.

8pm: Smoke a bowl, pig out on some vegan food.

9pm: Smoke hookah while talking/singing with other hippies about problems in the world.

1am: Smoke weed, pass out in front yard.

Note that none of these actions actually contribute anything toward solving any of the problems that hippies love to bring to your attention at every opportunity. However, even modern-day hippies may feel especially motivated a day or two out of each year and may in these cases go so far as to attend a peace rally holding a sign with a creative slogan such as "STOP THE WAR!"

Word on the street #2: Law enforcement

2008-08-20T20:36:00.000-07:00

What seems to be the officer, problem? Having to deal with a law enforcement officer is considered to be the most stressful event once can experience in life, narrowly edging out #2 realizing you're about to be spaghettified by a black hole, and #3 having your entire extended family killed in a fire that was caused by one of those stupid magic tricks you're always trying to show them. Here is a useful guide on which words or phrases you should use when referring to police officers, depending on your desired offensiveness level...

10) Suckas in a uniform waiting to get shot

Police actually used to find this term rather humorous before it was used in N.W.A.'s "F*** Tha Police." Police really do not like that song, although they do consider Ice-T's "Cop Killer" to be rather insightful social commentary.

9) Pigs

Most of us at one time have experienced the disappointment of going to Krispy Kreme only to realize that a couple of policemen beat you to the punch and totally cleaned the place out of donuts. Bummer. However, resist the temptation to call the offending officers "pigs." Doing so will likely have the same effect as calling your girlfriend the same, followed by snorting sounds, after she asks "Do I look fat in this dress?"

8) The motherf***ing po-pos

Due to the profanity, this one is rather offensive to a police officer, especially one with an Oedipus Complex.

7) The jacket

As Eazy-E says, "I'm tired of the motherf***ing jacket, sweatin' my gang while I'm chillin' in the shack." Police do not like N.W.A. members - see above.

6) Barney

Usually calling someone the name of a douchey purple dinosaur is the ultimate insult. However, this highly disrespectful term is often forgiven as it is generally used by a type of people that police officers prefer not to arrest, called "white people."

5) The fuzz

This one is totally played out and will make you look over-the-hill. 1976 called...it wants its slang word for "police officer" back.

4) Boys in blue

We all know cops are on a major power trip. Anything that plays down their manhood may result in a flashlight shoved up your tailpipe.

3) The five-O

This comes from the Hawaiian word for "police." Most people don't speak Hawaiian and will have no clue what you're talking about.

2) Cops

A reliable go-to when you're in a pinch and not sure which one to use.

1) Police officers

You pansy. If you use this one, the cops will most likely think you're sucking up because you have something to hide. Prepare for a full body cavity search and possible Rodney King-style beatdown.

The rivalry

2008-08-18T22:25:00.000-07:00

Almost every great person or institution in history has had a rival.

Take the following examples:

The Romans/The Greeks

The ancient Babylonians/The Soviet Union

Muhammad Ali/Joe Frazier

Ohio State/Michigan

Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama

The Buffalo Master/The "James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher" guy
Eva Longoria/Evan Longoria

Tom Cruise/me

Your mom/The prostitute that works on the adjacent street corner

Rivals keep us going and aspire us to be all we can be (sort of like the army in this regard).

Due to the overwhelming success and popularity of this blog, a rival has arisen to challenge the greatness that is "Buffalo This." That rival is "Bison That." This guy is apparently offended by the disrespect I have shown toward bison.

Apparently he's another celebrity who cares a lot about buffalo, and his name is "Jon." I suspect it may be Jon Stewart. If it is, I have this to say: Stewart, you rascal! Up to your old tricks again, I see? You can't buffalo me with that weak attempt. Go back to your "Daily Show" or whatever that's called. News flash, buddy: nobody watches it! Good luck trying to make it big with that - you'll need it!

Anyway, time will tell whether "Bison That" can prove itself to be a formidable competitor to "Buffalo This." My guess is I'm about to go Ali on his weak Frazier ass.

The big move

2008-08-17T21:56:00.000-07:00

Quick update on the status of this blog: I am now officially relocating my home office to Buffalo, New York. This does not mean that I am going to be living in Buffalo (still in the Bay Area), ever traveling to Buffalo (fat chance), or becoming a Buffalo Bills fan (Steelers, baby!). But before you throw your hands up in protest and call me a carpetbagging son of a bitch, please consider the following:

-Hillary Clinton claims to be from New York and Arkansas and Illinois and pretty much every other state. I'm a hell of a lot more than a New Yorker than she is.

-Sleazy companies often establish themselves in the Cayman Islands or Delaware to avoid paying taxes and such. However, these companies generally have no physical location, other than maybe a P.O. Box, in these places. Believe me, I used to work for one such company, which was actually less of a "company" and more of a "$1.75 billion Ponzi scheme." I did not get the opportunity to go to our "headquarters" in the Cayman Islands (or even Delaware for that matter), but I did get the great pleasure of slaving over spreadsheets until midnight in the New York City office on many occasions.

-Buffalo doesn't really exist. There may be a Buffalo in the real world, but this is not the real world. It's a simulation. They could have just as easily called California "Buffalo." So what is Buffalo really? It's an abstract construct of some huge supercomputer, represented in zillions of 0's and 1's. Is anyone really "from Buffalo?" Are we all in some way "from Buffalo?" The world may never know.

Even though I am not really "from" what you would call "Buffalo," I bleed Buffalo brown and feel like more of a "Buffalonian" than most buffalo do (although maybe not more than most buffalo Buffalo buffalo).

So without further ado, I now declare: this blog is officially moving to Buffalo! Except not really.

F***, chuck, or marry?

2008-08-16T11:31:00.000-07:00

I'd like to start off by saying that I'm going to censor the word "f***" because I just found out that this blog is required reading for a first grade class in Boise, Idaho. The youth of America are already screwed up enough. I mean, Zac Efron. Seriously, that guy. The one who looks like cross between a busted tranny and of Lindsay Lohan on a bad day with way too much makeup.

Some of you may be aware of the game called "F***, chuck, or marry." This is a sick, twisted game that only brings out the worst in people. Kids these days love it because it can make their friends admit pedophilic tendencies or fetishes having to do with animals or inanimate objects. The rule is that given three choices, you have to pick one to f*** (typically the one you feel the most physical attraction towards), one to chuck (the one you want nothing to do with), and one to marry (the one you feel you'd have the best emotional connection with). When the choices are Jenna Jameson, Rosie O'Donnell, and the nice girl next door, it's a pretty easy game. Not so much when the choices are a 3 pound Maine lobster, your grandma, and a razor-wire fence. Trust me, unless you play this game with 6-year-old Girl Scouts training to be Catholic nuns, you're much more likely to encounter the latter selection than the former.

This game often causes people to honestly state things such as:
"I would definitely marry my little brother." or
"Now that you put it that way, I would want to f*** that bag of rusty nails!"

One major point of confusion to me was that where I come from, "f***" and "chuck" meant more or less the same thing - "chuck" as in "I'd sure like to chuck my junk in her!" (I know, I'm a hopeless romantic.) So when I was younger I often had to clarify this, as in "Whichever one means I want to have sex with it, that would definitely be the three-toed pygmy sloth."

This is the most disturbing children's activity since "High School Musical," which was itself the most disturbing children's activity since the "deez nutz" phenomenon. F***ing, chucking, and marrying are terrible things that should not be done by anyone until at least the age of 30.

The wisdom of old proverbs

2008-08-14T20:54:00.000-07:00

Ok, kids, today's topic is old proverbs that can teach us important life lessons. I am now going to go through a few that I find particularly meaningful and discuss what can be learned from them.

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away."

Hey, any projectile can keep someone away if you can throw with enough speed and accuracy. Don't skip out on baseball practice, kids.

"A bird in the hand is worth two in the Bush."

I think this refers to the time Dick Cheney shot some guy after mistaking him for a quail. I'd rather not get into this one because I like to keep things politically neutral around here. It may also have a hidden sexual meaning, because "bird" can mean a woman, and you know what "bush" is. The Italian word for "bird," "uccello," is also slang for the same thing that a certain synonym for "rooster" is slang for in English. In that case I think a "bird" in the "bush" would be worth at least 10 in the hand. This one is rather confusing all-around.

"Every rose has it's thorn, just like every night has it's dawn, just like every cowboy sings a sad, sad song; every rose has it's thorn."

This is an ancient adage that dates back to the Babylonian civilization. Basically it means you have to take the good with the bad and the bad with the good. The "cowboy" part is a reference to the struggle with homosexuality that the characters in "Brokeback Mountain" faced, and the repeat of the "every rose has its thorn" part was added in 2007 to make the saying more marketable for the second season of "Rock of Love."

"If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."
This one is from "Bambi." Ignore it - it is about a cartoon deer and has no bearing on real life.

"Before you can judge a person, you must first walk a mile with a moccasin."
This is an old Indian proverb (not sure which type of Indian). The actual wording varies. I guess if you suffer through walking a mile with a poisonous snake then you pretty much have the right to judge whoever you damn well please.

"You can get a good look at a T-bone by sticking your head up a butcher's ass, but wouldn't you rather just take the bull's word for it?"

This one is from "Tommy Boy," an 1995 classic that swept most of that year's Academy Awards. Reminds me of a similar phrase: "If you shit needle the bull, you're going to get the horns." I think the point here is that anything you do involving a bull's rear end is probably not going to end well for you.

"To be or not to be, that is the question."

Not to be, that is the answer. This is all just a simulation. I don't understand why Shakespeare never figured that out if he was so smart.

"How much Buffalo buffalo would a Buffalo buffalo buffalo if a Buffalo buffalo could buffalo Buffalo buffalo?"
I could never figure out the answer to this riddle. My best guess is about four. The meaning of this one is supposedly very deep and is definitely way over my head.

Speaking of riddles, here's an old classic...
"If you're flying over the Grand Canyon and your canoe loses a wheel, how many chicken bones does it take to fill a doghouse?"
Purple, of course.

And finally...
"Sometimes you buffalo the buffalo, and sometimes the buffalo buffaloes you."

Amen, brother.

Guess who's back

2008-08-13T07:23:00.000-07:00

Seriously, guess who it is. Any clue? Nobody? Bueller? The answer, which may come as a shock to many of you, is me.

What a satisfying four days on the Outer Banks! Just me, my entourage, and the occasional paparazzi photographer trying to snap a photo of me changing into my swim trunks. Life just doesn't get much better than that.

I may have been in Carolina, but my mind was, of course, in Buffalo the entire time.

As the old James Taylor song goes (I think):

In my mind I'm goin' to Buffalo
Can't you see the buffalo?
Can't you just taste the buffalo sauce?
Ain't it just like a buffalo of mine
To buffalo me from behind?
Yes I'm goin' to Buffalo in my mind

You were probably expecting an inspirational, breathtaking, life-altering post today. Too bad. As the old saying goes, sometimes you buffalo the buffalo and sometimes the buffalo buffaloes you. Wait til you see what I've got for you tomorrow though...

The Beach Boys weigh in

2008-08-07T17:17:00.000-07:00

Bad news for people who can't live without this award-winning, inspirational, Pulitzer-worthy blog: I'm going to the beach for awhile, so I won't be posting anything until Wednesday (sound of people fainting). Calm down, it's ok, you'll survive - I think. In the meantime, try reading this blog, or maybe this one, to hold you over.

Before I go though, let me leave you with a little tune I used to relax and listen to while lounging on the shores of Lake Erie, enjoying some wings at the Anchor Bar, or barreling over Niagara Falls. It was inspired by an old Beach Boys song.

(begin island rhythm)

Northwest of NYC
There's a place called Buffalo
That's where you wanna go
To see some buffalo

Buffalo sauce in your hand
Buffalo roam across the land
You can watch all the buffalo
Buffalo Buffalo buffalo
Way up in Buffalo

[Chorus]
Rochester, Syracuse
Don't make any excuse
If you're in Erie or Cleveland
It's time to be leavin'
Albany or Scranton...
Ooo I want to take you up to Buffalo
We'll find some buffalo to buffalo
Then cover all of them in buffalo
And watch them buffalo

Right across the "eau"
There's a place called Toronto
Full of Freedom Canadians
That's not where you wanna go
Just stay in Buffalo

[Chorus]

Eat some buffalo wings
Watch buffalo buffalo all kinds of things
See "buffalo" in all its meanings
Enjoy whatever it brings
Way up in Buffalo

(To tune of chorus)
Buffalo buffalo bu-u-u-u-ffalo
Buffalo buffalo bu-u-u-u-ffalo
Buffalo buffalo bu-u-u-u-ffalo
Buffalo buffalo...
Ooo I want to take you up to Buffalo
We'll find some buffalo to buffalo...
(fade out)

I'd like to thank Brian Wilson for that little chestnut, who if you don't know was a member of the Beach Boys and later went on to become a pitcher for the San Francisco Giants. Speaking of which...more pop culture stars in baseball!?! Come on!

Word on the street #1: Your wife

2008-08-06T20:24:00.000-07:00

I would now like to introduce a new series of posts called "word on the street." These are meant to be a guide for which slang word or phrase to use at what time depending on your desired offensiveness level. Just like the Eskimos have 20 or so words for snow, Americans have dozens of words for "prostitute" or "police officer," to name a few. You should generally read these from the bottom up, because let's face it: if it's not offensive, it's just not that interesting.

As you probably know, the world's foremost master of the English language is...wait, who was it again...it seems to have slipped my mind...ah yes...me. To avoid selling myself short, however, I should also inform you that I am a master of every other language that exists or ever existed on Earth. In fact, I have invented or improved linguistic masterpiece sentences in Italian ("Nelly è negli anelli pelle pelle di Pelé."), French - I mean Freedom ("Vous allez aller à l'école."), and ancient Chinese (Lion-eating poet in the stone den). My contribution to the last one was adding the modern Mandarin slang word "shĭ," which roughly translates as "shit," changing the subject of the sentence to "Shit-eating poet in the stone den."

But back to English, the only language that really matters (according to me - and Geno's Steaks). Here are 10 ways to refer to your wife, from the one that is most likely to get you into the doghouse to the one that's most likely to get your "dog" into the "house," if you know what I mean (ok, that's a bit of a stretch (That's what she said!)).

10) Hitler
Likening your wife to arguably the most evil human being ever to walk the earth? Probably not the best idea if you're hoping to get laid again this century.

9) Just some girl I know

As in the following:

Hot girl at bar: "Who was that calling?"

You: "Oh, just some girl I know. Don't worry about it."

Women hate when you minimize the relationship. If you tell her you are less than 100.000000% sure that you want to spend the rest of your life with her and write letters to your parents every day about how she's the greatest thing that every happened to you, expect a hysterical fit to follow.

8) The boss

If there's one thing women love, it's controlling every aspect of your life while keeping up the facade that they are the "cool" wife or girlfriend that lets you do whatever you want. Calling her "the boss" exposes this facade for what it is.

7) The old lady

Women do not appreciate being called "old" in any circumstances. You might be better off referring to her as "that young, hot 19-year-old girl," but then again you might also get smacked if she doesn't realize you're talking about her. Just avoid any age-related references if you can help it.

6) The old B&C

Again you're calling her old, and women are also very offended when you refer to them by acronyms or abbreviations. Just don't, m'kay?

5) The ball and chain

This can be offensive for the same reason as "the boss," but "ball and chain" can lighten the mood because it is a clever metaphor and also because it might bring to mind images of kinky outfits and bondage games.

4) My biznitch

While "bitch" is considered offensive to some people when used in reference to a woman, when you throw the "izn" in the middle of it, people aren't offended, they just think you are an idiot.

3) Wifey

This is obviously a ripoff from a Next song, and not even the funny one about popping a boner on the dance floor. Your wife might consider it mildly cute, but your buddies will just think you're corny and unoriginal.

2) My better half

Cheesier than the offerings at a Wisconsin farmer's market. Why don't you just take over as lead singer for Lonestar while you're at it?

1) The love of my life

Did it hurt having your testicles removed?

Stuff Buffalo Like (#2)

2008-08-05T07:45:00.000-07:00

You knew this was coming. The second part in our who-the-hell-knows-how-many part series "Stuff _____ Like" is dedicated to our big, furry, brown friends who give meaning to our otherwise mundane and worthless lives: buffalo!

Lingustics
There are few things a buffalo enjoys more than an interesting, grammatically flawless, and cleverly worded sentence. It probably comes as no surprise to you that buffalo find the buffalo phenomenon very fascinating and are honored to have the privilege of being part of the English language's greatest and most notable linguistic masterpiece. In fact, I recently had the honor of being able to journey to Buffalo, NY for Buffalofest '08, where several buffalo that were buffaloed by other buffalo buffaloed other buffalo that were occasionally buffaloed by other buffalo. They were all covered in hot wing sauce and buffaloed the other buffalo in the traditional style of the city. I think the play-by-play announcer, Dick Vitale, gave quite an accurate description of the event:
Buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo. It's awesome baby!
That's basically what happened, more or less.

Buffaloing buffalo - do NOT try this at home:

Almost going extinct, then coming back like Jordan, wearing the 45
The fact is that nobody cares about animals that aren't and/or weren't at one time endangered. Take deer for example. People are always killing them with guns and cars, and most people are absolutely disgusted by the sight of one and will often vomit uncontrollably. Everyone hates them. It is almost ridiculous to suggest that the noble buffalo could possibly be placed on the same whatever-the-opposite-of-a-pedestal-is as the lowly, vile, abhorrent deer, but in another simulated world, that may have easily come to pass. In the late 19th to early 20th century, buffalo were almost hunted to extinction by settlers and were often killed for their fur, meat, or bones, or in street fights between rival gangs. In 1905 the Buffalo king approached American president Teddy Roosevelt and revealed to him the ancient secret of the buffalo phenomenon. Roosevelt was so awestruck that he declared that killing a buffalo was to be made a federal offense punishable by slow, painful death. The buffalo population soon rebounded and buffalo ascended to an almost godlike status in the minds of the American public. What a shrewd, cunning move on the part of the buffalo. Of course I would expect no less from them.

Being called "buffalo" rather than "bison"
The following piece of artwork demonstrates the difference between a buffalo and a bi son:

Buffalo do not take kindly to being called "bison," "bi son," "carpet-munching daughter," or "unloved, confused transsexual hermaphrodite offspring." I suggest not making this mistake if you don't want to be blacklisted by all buffalo worldwide.

Sucker bet

2008-08-03T17:19:00.000-07:00

Being one of the world's foremost celebrities and most brilliant and revolutionary scientific minds, I decided to follow in the footsteps of other great celebrities/thinkers out there (Warren Buffett, Ted Danson, Brian Eno, Freeman Dyson, Ray Kurzweil, etc) and place a bet on longbets.org.

Here is the bet:

As you can see, I win if the Large Hadron Collider does not destroy Earth, and my opponent, Joe Keane, wins if it does. Now of course you're probably thinking, "Wait a minute! You said the LHC probably would destroy this planet!" - and you would be right. However, there is one factor you probably haven't considered: if he wins the bet, it's not going to matter because chances are none of us will be alive anymore! Yes, I am a brilliant master of trickery who makes buffaloing the unbuffaloable look like child's play.

At first I thought this guy was "Joe Keane" (get it - "joking") with this bet, but $500 says he isn't. So I really hope the world doesn't get destroyed, because I could really use that $500 to pay down the loan on my Mazda 3!

Now I should clarify one thing: no matter who wins the bet, both of us have to contribute $500 to the charity of the winner, so neither of us stands to profit from this wager, especially not the other guy, since money won't really matter much after the entire earth has been sucked into a black hole.

So in the unlikely event that the world does still exist in 2018, $1000 will go to Save the Children thanks to my noble, selfless, heroic efforts. Oh, stop it, stop it. Most charitable person in the world? No, no, really, stop it. What? Nobel Peace Prize? No, there's no way I...well, maybe. All right, I admit, I'm basically the reincarnation of Gandhi - except much more humble.

Click here to see the actual bet on the website. No, this is not a publicity stunt. Oh, who am I kidding - everything I do is a publicity stunt.

Stuff People Like (#1): The first of many rip-offs

2008-08-02T12:06:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you run out of good ideas and have to resort to ripping someone off. Other times, you have plenty of good ideas, but what the hell, you feel like ripping someone off anyway for no particular reason. This is one of the latter times.

One of my favorite blogs out there is Stuff White People Like. This blog is not nearly as popular as mine (he doesn't even have 40 million hits yet), but it has pretty good content for a blog that nobody really reads. There are other ripoffs such as "Stuff Black People Like" and "Stuff Asian People Like," which I am not going to link to out of principle because they are blatant rip-offs and I don't condone that type of behavior.

Now for my own blatant rip-off: I am going to do a however-many-I-feel-like part series on "Stuff ______ Like," where each new episode investigates several distinct preferences of a specific demographic group. So here we go with "Stuff People Like," where you will learn about three things that human beings in general enjoy...

Warming up the environment
People have always made attempts to increase the temperature of their environment. The first advance toward this goal was the invention of fire, which could warm up a local area and also had the great side effect of being able to destroy incriminating evidence. A quantum leap forward was made in 1973, when scientists invented carbon dioxide, a mysterious gas that in large amounts has the ability to warm up the entire atmosphere of the earth. Even better, they discovered that it was really easy to make cars and and factories produce a bunch of this stuff. Jackpot! With this the quest to warm up the globe began. This mission was supported by everyone except Californian yuppies, who think their climate is already warm enough and consequently all drive Toyota Priuses, and Al Gore, whose thick layer of blubber allows him to be comfortable at temperatures as low as 30 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.

Frequently flip-flopping on whether they want to accrete matter
If you attempt to track a person's attitude regarding whether he/she wants to gain or lose mass, you're probably going to see more flip-flops than you would if you watched a John Kerry/John McCain debate in front of 10,000 people on South Beach. It is not uncommon to witness a person ravenously gruffle down a double bacon cheeseburger and large fries, and then make a self-contradictory statement like, "Damn! I need to lose these thunder thighs before bikini season." only a few hours later. People are rather silly in this regard. According to my research, the competing forces at play here are the natural human instinct to accrete matter and the need to fit into cars, doorways, and other tight spaces.

Volunteering useless information
One crazy thing about people is that they love to provide useless information to those around them. In fact, 64% of things people say fall into one of the two following categories: stuff nobody cares about or obvious statements. Take the following examples:

1) Stuff nobody cares about:
"I'm running for President of the United States of America in 2008." -Bob Barr
"Hey everyone! I'm going to jump off this bridge! I'm serious - I'll do it!"
"Amy Winehouse just (insert any action here)."
"Remember to make sure that the cooling mechanism is working before you turn on the nuclear reactor."

2) Obvious statements:
"My favorite blog is definitely 'Buffalo This.'" -any human being
"This is a robbery! Get down on the floor!"
"That was really awkward when you accidentally shit needled that random guy thinking he was Timmy."
"If we can just score some points and stop them on defense, we've got a good chance to win this game!"
"Buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."

These are all highly unnecessary statements. If you are a person, you probably enjoy saying these type of things (sorry for the species stereotype), but there is no reason to do so. Before you say anything, I recommend you think the following: "Do all 6 billion people in the world already know this fact?" and "Do any of the 6 billion people in the world actually give a damn about what I'm about to say?" If the answers are "yes" or "no," respectively, then please do the rest of humanity a favor and SHUT UP!

...and with that, my friends, this blog has officially jumped the shark.

A real shit show

2008-07-31T20:15:00.000-07:00

It's a crazy simulated world we live in. Every now and then you come across something that's just totally NCAA: Not Cool At All. One of those things is a little game that the Japanese call "kancho," the Koreans call "ddong chim," and I call "f***ing disgusting."

Before I tell you what this is: let me warn you, it is not for the faint of heart. It's a real shit show. A real fecal festival. A real dump demonstration. A real crap carnival. A real poop parade. A real doo-doo display. A real excrement expo. A real scat spectacle.

This little game apparently started in either Japan or Korea, but my money goes on the Japanese based on the fact that they have been the world's leading exporter of weird, awkward, and disturbing things every year since 1957. So...without further ado...from the people who brought you awesome cultural phenomena like vending machines that sell schoolgirls' used panties and weird cartoon porn where people have sex with monsters.......IIIIIIIIIITTT'S SHIT NEEDLE!!!

Yes, it's shit needle. That's actually the literal translation of the Korean "ddong chim," according to this goofy blog post. The point of this game is to surprise someone by sticking your finger up his or her butthole. That's it. Your finger, someone's butt. Sounds like a blast, right?

One interesting thing about this game is that the position you're supposed to assume when shit needling is down on one knee with both hands together and both index fingers pointed buttward. One unfortunate consequence of this position is that in the rare case that you run into one of the few people who doesn't enjoy an unexpected finger shoved up his or her tailpipe, you're in the perfect position to receive a swift kick to the head that's sure to wipe that "Ha ha - I just rammed my finger up your sphincter!" smirk right off your face.

Some reverse peer pressure:

If you think that "shit needle" is the cat's pajamas and all the cool kids are doing it, take a look at the above picture. If those people in the foreground look like "the cool kids" to you, then I bet you're the type of guy who knows Planck's constant to 5 significant figures and could give me a pretty good description of how it feels to spend the better part of a day trapped in a locker.

So kids, I urge you, please try to resist the temptation to go around shit needling. I mean if you're going to do anything needle-related, it should be shooting up heroin.

Taking the red pill

2008-07-29T21:11:00.000-07:00

Hey there, chief. Guess who's back again with another revelation that's going to change the way you look at the world...or shall I say "world." I have some interesting news that you might be interested to know: you are not real. Nobody is. This is all just a big computer simulation, just like "The Matrix." Seriously.
In case you were too lazy to click on the link in the first paragraph, let me summarize Dr. Nick Bostrom's fascinating scientific paper for you in three words: you are fake. You're just an artificial brain in an artificial world, a mess of circuits somewhere in some mega-supercomputer controlled by future humans, aliens, or machines that are going take over the world after Arnold Schwarzenegger fails to save John Connor. I am fake too, but the difference between you and me is that I make this look good. Everything you see is fake: your mom, the Tooth Fairy, pro wrestling, that stripper's boobs, the $5 Gucci shades you bought off that bum in D.C., you name it. Fake, fake, fake. To be fair though, it is not totally certain that we are living in a simulation. Here are the three possibilities:

1) We (humans) are about to bite the dust, probably at the hands of the Large Hadron Collider.

2) We are never going to run any simulations of past humans or weird hypothetical worlds, and neither will any aliens or machines in the entire universe or any other universe, ever.

3) Everything we know is a pack of LIES and we're really living in a simulation!

Let me explore these three possibilities, which are mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive, and examine what the chances of each are:
1) True, the LHC probably will destroy the world. However I feel like the good false vacuum scenario is a little more likely than the rest of them. So let's call it a 40% chance that the LHC destroys the world and also a 5% chance that something else does (probably something related to Al Gore, like global warming or Al eating so much food that there is none left for the rest of us and we all starve). 45% overall.
2) Um...no. Simulations of past worlds or fake worlds are going to be considered way too awesome to pass up by human, alien, or computer nerds of the future. Furthermore, any civilizations that run one simulation will almost definitely choose to run a metric shitload of them, so the vast majority of worlds out there will be simulated ones. So the chances are very high that we are in one. So let's call the chances of the possibility that nobody decides to run any simulations 5%.
3) This is all a simulation and you are not real. 50% chance.

Let me repeat what I just said in layman's terms: there is a 95% chance that we are either not real or we're all about to die. Yes. It's an indisputable fact. Stop crying and get over it, crybaby.

Could people in the future run such a simulation? Yes, obviously. If you don't believe that we will have the technology to do this kind of thing within 100 years from now, then please get back to your Amish community before Brother Jebediah finds out you're surfing the 'net instead of building that barn, Ezekiel.

Why would they run these simulations? Here are my top five reasons (there are many more):
5) To play fantasy fantasy baseball with the fantasy baseball teams of the simulated world.
4) To make a comedy show out of the stupidest things people have ever done (yes, it will include that time you got shroomed up and jumped in the tiger cage).
3) To check out naked chicks in the shower (obviously).
2) To compensate for the fact that they feel inadequate because of the fact that they're not real and just living in a stupid simulation by lording over some other simulation within a simulation.
1) To see if any of the simulated people can come up with any new and exciting additions to the buffalo phenomenon.

I'm really glad the creator of this simulation chose to make me a huge celebrity with millions of adoring fans. I mean, he could have just as easily made me some loser that writes a stupid blog that nobody reads. Whew - glad that didn't happen!

Bummed to find out that you're nothing more than some nerd from the future's Second Life character? Don't be! The good part about the world being fake is that you can do whatever you want with no REAL consequences! Of course certain things might get you thrown into a simulated jail where you'll be simulated cornholed in the simulated shower by a simulated 350 pound tattoo-covered Hell's Angel named Bubba. But at least it's not really happening, right?

So yeah...tough break there, Keanu. I feel for you, champ. The silver lining in all this though is that you still have this awesome simulated blog to read. All right!

Hittin' it

2008-07-28T17:27:00.000-07:00

Looks like a lot of people have been hittin' it recently. 100 of them to be exact.

Oh yeah!!! Being famous is awesome! 100 hits! Only 4,157 more before I break Pete Rose's record!

With hilarious and informative posts like this one, this blog is guaranteed to hit 1 million by August or so.

To celebrate this huge milestone, I'm going to provide you with some guaranteed psyche-outs for the four most popular sports in America that are guaranteed to throw your opponent off his game, without being in bad taste or offending anyone:

Wiffle ball: "It was called 'hittle ball' before you started playing!"

Badminton: "It was just called 'minton' before you started playing!"

Biathlon: "It was just called an 'athlon' before you started playing! I mean come on, dude, I know you swing both ways. Admit it already."

Midget wheelchair basketball: "It was just called 'basketball' before you gimpy little f***ers started playing!"

Respect for the cheese hogs

2008-07-26T13:33:00.000-07:00

It is extremely important in this day and age to always make sure to use the correct term when describing a type of human being. For example, if you see a guy in a wheelchair, the correct term to refer to that person is "alternatively advantaged," not "crippled," "handicapped," or "old gimpy-legged Pete over there." This term refers to the fact that while this guy may not be able to keep up with you in a 100 meter sprint, he would probably whoop your sorry able-bodied ass in a "don't move your legs" contest. Similarly, you should never call a white person "cracker," "honkey," "person of the pasty persuasion," or "melanin-challenged," and you should never, ever, under any circumstances, refer to a French - I mean Freedom - person as a "cheese-eating surrender monkey."

That brings me to our next topic: fat people. There are sure are a lot of them these days - what's the deal with that? Oh sorry, my publicist is telling me "fat person" is politically incorrect. What is the correct term? Lardass? No. No stranger to the biscuit tin? Eh...not quite. Cheese hog? Ok, that sounds about right. Cheese hog it is.

But do cheese hogs really deserve all the negative press they get in this country? Maybe all those people out there that are adding more pounds than a British accountant are onto something.

This is how a typical morbidly obese person looks at the world (from best to worst):

1) The rest of the universe (4 x 10^55 lbs or something like that)

2) Me (524 lbs)

3) That skinny little prick over there (147 lbs)
4) Midgets (pretty damn small and terrible at basketball)

So to these people, bigger is better. Here is where one of the disaster scenarios from the Large Hadron Collider can teach us a valuable lesson. What do black holes do? They accrete matter. Are they successful? Hell yes they are - there are a metric shitload of them in the universe and there is absolutely nothing known to man that can stop the bastards or even slow them down. That's a pretty good track record if you ask me. The fact of the "matter" (notice the clever pun) is that all matter in the universe is broken down into two groups: 1) matter that is a part of you, and 2) matter that is a part of everything else. The main point of life is to commandeer as much of the matter out there as possible and make it a part of yourself. The more of that you can do, the further ahead you are in the game, and of course the best way to do that is to get really, really fat.

Now wait a minute, you say, couldn't you work out like crazy and gain the same amount of weight in muscle? The answer is no, moron, you can't. First of all, there are limits on how much muscle you can pack on, and second of all, the very act of working out to increase your muscle mass burns calories, which is the exact opposite of what you're trying to do!

Instead, your best bet is to sit on the couch watching reruns of shows featuring Rosie O'Donnell (for inspiration) while shoveling Doritos from either the a) the bag or b) your chest, directly into your mouth. But picking up the chips still burns calories, so better yet, you could build a robot that moves the chips to your mouth for you, or even better, you could have someone else build a robot that does that and also brings the bags of chips and bottles of Shiner Bock from the cupboard/fridge to you so you don't have to get up. And while you're at it, get yourself a voice activated remote - pushing those buttons gets tiring!

So from now on I propose we refer to fat people by the honorable title of "extremely adept matter accreters"...or if you must, "cheese hogs" is fine too.

Modern-day feuds

2008-07-24T21:31:00.000-07:00

Now that we no longer have the Cold War or the east coast/west coast gangsta rivalry to entertain us, you may find the world a little boring. If so, I am here to your rescue once again with the top 5 feuds of the modern era, as well as my prediction of who will come out on top.

5) Corey Hart vs. Corey Hart
The "Sunglasses at Night" singer and the Milwaukee Brewers outfielder of the same name have been bitter rivals since the latter Corey Hart made his MLB debut in 2004. After the singer allegedly ridiculed the baseball player's sub-par .193 batting average during his brief stint with the Brewers in 2005, the baseball player allegedly responded, "Are you kidding me? Why would I care what this douche says about me? I mean he's French Canadian for god's sake." However Hart (the player) often wore sunglasses during night games to mock the singer throughout the 2006 season, resulting in some costly errors in the field which allowed opposing teams to score some unnecessary runs.
WINNER: Corey Hart, in a landslide.

4) The Wilkinson family vs. the Garcia family

This feud that rocked the entire world started during a 1992 episode of the TV show "Family Feud" which pitted these soon-to-be bitter rivals against each other. Tensions were high from the opening buzzer when Sherri Wilkinson believed she had buzzed in ahead of Anna Garcia despite the fact that the buzzer recognized Garcia as the first responder. The Garcia family went on to win the game, but fell ten points short in the "fast money" round when the question was "Name a daytime TV game show" and John Garcia answered "The Price Is Right" when the #1 answer was actually "Family Feud." After this mistake, the Wilkinson family taunted their opponents mercilessly. It is unknown what happened after filming completed.
WINNER: The Garcia family. I mean they won the TV show, and that's what counts.

3) Kansas vs. Arkansas
You may not know this, but Arkansas was originally called "Kansas" when it was admitted to the union in 1836. Everything was fine until 1861 when Kansas also decided to call itself "Kansas" as a tribute to the original Kansas. Arkansas, however, did not take kindly to this action as it considered this impostor a boring cornfield state that lacked many of the things that Arkansas prided itself upon, such as the Ozarks, the nation's largest concentration of Waffle Houses per capita, and Scottie Pippen. In 1887, Arkansas, under the leadership of Governor Bill Clinton, renamed itself "Arkansas" ("our Kansas") and adopted the official state slogan "This is Arkansas, bitch. Get your own f***ing Kansas." There has been bad blood between the two states ever since.

WINNER: Kansas. The 2008 NCAA basketball final was used to decide this one.

2) The Buffalo Master vs. the "Buffalo This." blogger
The Buffalo Master considers this new cavalier blogger an unparalleled threat to the sanctity of "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." He feels that the blogger's proposed additions fly in the face of everything he has stood for throughout his tenure. The Buffalo Master and his predecessors have had many bitter rivals throughout the centuries, but none have been as hated as this one...
WINNER: Me. This blog is a lot more popular than whatever the hell "Wikipedia" is.

1) The Buffalo Master vs. the guy who wrote the Wikipedia article on "James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher"

...except this one. The author of this Wikipedia article takes his literary masterpiece nearly as seriously as the Buffalo Master does his, and will stop at nothing to prove that his sentence is the greatest linguistic sentence in the English language (which doesn't include "Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den"). His main argument is that "had" has only one meaning, so using it 11 times in a row is much more impressive than using an extremely versatile word like "buffalo" 8 times in a row.
WINNER: Neither. Me again. I invented the sentence: "James while John had had 'buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo' had had 'buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo;' 'buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo' had had a better effect on the teacher." That clearly tops both.

Movie review: "Bei-Robut"

2008-07-23T12:33:00.000-07:00

Bei-Robut (2006), starring Bei-Robut as himself. Supporting actors are Jonathan Frank, Nick Damiano, Brian Tran, and Random Korean Guy.
Awards: Best Picture, Best Screenplay, Best Actor (Bei-Robut), Best Nerd (Tran), Best Portrayal of a Beirut or Beer Pong Game, Best Robot with a Boston Accent (Bei-Robut), Best Supporting Supporting Actor (Random Korean Guy), all in 2006.

Wow. It is rare that you see a movie that makes you laugh and cry at the same time and blows you away with incredible cinematography and special effects. Such movies come along only once in a decade it seems, and for the 2000's (2001-2010), this is most certainly the one.

The movie starts by exploring a common but rarely acknowledged stereotype in society: the inability of robots to play beirut/beer pong. It then proceeds to brilliantly develop several complex characters: the Obnoxious Dudes (Damiano and Frank), Poindexter (Tran), and Bei-Robut (himself), a robot out to fight the stereotypes that plague the world around him and teach the doubters a valuable lesson.

Poindexter (Tran) celebrates with Bei-Robut:

The cinematography is mind-blowing, especially considering the movie was filmed using a 2 megapixel Canon PowerShot S300 manufactured in the year 2000 that was purchased by the filming crew for $20. The stunning special effects make it impossible to tell when the shooters actually make the shots and when state-of-the-art TV tricks are at play.

In the movie, the robot and nerd duo, in an extremely unpredictable plot twist, goes on to defeat its opponents, and the heartwarming final scene shows the villains exiting in shame while the heroes celebrate a well-deserved victory. Clever social commentary abounds as the movie explores major timely issues such as the negative stereotyping of robots' performance in drinking games and the heated debate on whether nerds should just stop it with that annoying nasal voice and stupid Warcraft obsession and just stop, like, being so weird and stuff.

The soundtrack, consisting of the song "Mr. Roboto" by Styx, goes so well with the movie that it appears as if the song was designed just for this film, much like Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" album and "The Wizard of Oz," except about ten times better. This particular feature brought many audience members to tears when I saw this in the theaters, as they realized they would most likely never witness something so perfect and beautiful again (well maybe, if more words were ever added to the buffalo phenomenon). It also makes this movie ideal for watching on weed.

On top of all this, Bei-Robut, who is actually from Georgia and speaks in a heavy southern drawl, shows off his versatile voice talents by executing flawless a New England accent that would put Ted Kennedy to shame.

Obnoxious Dudes (Damiano and Frank) disappointed by poor shooting. Random Korean Guy (himself) can't bear to watch the slaughter and seeks comfort in his computer:

Do not bother watching another movie for the next ten years. This masterpiece will make all other movies out there look like "From Justin to Kelly" in comparison.

The people demand buffalo!

2008-07-21T19:55:00.000-07:00

Recently we took a poll of 10,000 regular readers of this blog and asked what they want to read more about. Almost every one gave the same answer: "More buffalo!!!" Well, ask and you shall receive...

Let me start with one important fact that you absolutely must take note of: for any number from 1 to infinity, you can compose a sentence out of exactly that many buffaloes. Let's go through a few examples:
1) "Buffalo!" Here I am either telling you to go and do some buffaloing, pointing out a herd of buffalo, or directing your attention to the city of Buffalo.
2) "Buffalo buffalo." Here I am telling you to go and buffalo some buffalo. (Seriously, go do it right now.)
More than 15) At this point you still have a technically valid sentence, although it is a run-on and involves a large number of buffalo involved in a complex hierarchical structure of buffaloing. This is not realistic. Let me tell you, I have been around a few buffalo in my days, and the fact of the matter is that if you're a buffalo then you're pretty much going to be either a buffaloer or a buffaloee. I've never seen a situation where Buffalo A buffaloes Buffalo B who buffaloes Buffalo C, who gets buffaloed by Buffalo D but buffaloes Buffalo E, and so on. Contrary to popular belief, that amount of buffaloing just doesn't happen. I am the expert and I would know.

Got it? Ok, now it's time for me to blow your mind. Recent research has produced the greatest discovery since the invention of the internet (or the cell phone, or whatever the last really huge thing was): it may be possible to expand the buffalo sentence by three additional buffaloes without making it a run-on sentence, or even a less elegant one. 18 buffaloes. I am not kidding.

Ready? Now bear with me on this one. As you are probably aware, you can add a modifier to a verb that gives it a more specific meaning. You can nap, and then you can cat-nap. You can paddle, and then you can doggy paddle. I can surprise you, and then I can Cincinnati Surprise you. As you are probably aware, the verb "to buffalo" is a versatile one that can have three different unique meanings: 1) to intimidate, 2) to confuse, and 3) to deceive. As you can imagine, there are many different ways to buffalo someone (or some buffalo).

Now imagine there is a certain way to buffalo someone that is typical of the city of Buffalo. So I can buffalo you, and then I can Buffalo buffalo you. Alternatively, imagine there is a certain way of buffaloing that buffalo typically do. You could call this type of buffaloing "buffalo buffaloing." Still another possibility is that I could buffalo you with buffalo sauce, such as throwing a pail full of buffalo sauce on you to confuse (i.e. buffalo) you. That could also be buffalo buffaloing. Let's use the second of those meanings and construct a sentence of the same form as the original 15 buffalo sentence, except with each verb "buffalo" being replaced with "buffalo buffalo." Here goes:
Buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.

Behold a true thing of beauty. You will never see the world in the same way again.

"Jordan fades back...SWISH!...and that's the game!"

The Buffalo Master is really going to hate me now.

Fantasy Fantasy Baseball

2008-07-20T13:17:00.000-07:00

I have been a fantasy baseball and football player for many years and really enjoy the game. But then again I am extremely hardcore - I used to play REAL baseball in high school. For some people, fantasy baseball and football are a little too close to the action. I mean dealing with real players and using real stats makes for a pretty intense game. If you are one of these people, do not worry because there is a game for you: fantasy fantasy baseball (and football too!).

Unlike fantasy sports where you put together a team of your favorite sports stars and get points based on how well they perform, fantasy fantasy sports is a game where you put together a team of your favorite fantasy sports players and get points based on how well their fantasy sports teams do. For example, in the first round of a typical fantasy fantasy baseball draft, you might pick someone like ESPN's fantasy sports expert Matthew Berry and in the last round you might pick someone like...I don't know...your grandma, or someone.

So for those of you who are looking to get into the exciting world of fantasy fantasy sports, here are my top three tips for putting together a winning team:

1) Don't draft the league douchebag.

Nobody likes the guy who's always saying things like "Yeah! I got Tom Brady, bitches!" or "Your mom was really good last night. No, seriously, dude, I'm not even joking, she was. Dude. Really." People will not want to trade with this guy. That will hurt his team, which will in turn hurt your team.

2) Try to pick up players who can keep a cool head.

Is Bob from Baltimore going to drop Evan Longoria just because of a bad run of games or because he's tired of his wife sitting around watching "Desperate Housewives" DVDs all day? You do NOT want an impulsive player like that on your team.

3) Always look for upside.

Who would you rather have on your team: the grizzled vet who has finished in the middle of the pack each of the last five seasons or the promising newcomer who has had a rough go at it so far but has showed flashes of brilliance like when he grabbed Edinson Vólquez off waivers early this season? The first one? No. You're wrong, idiot. It's the second one.

Why play baseball when you can play FANTASY baseball? And why play fantasy baseball when you can play FANTASY fantasy baseball? Why sit at field level on the 50-yard line when you can hang out in the nosebleed section? If there's anything more exciting than being part of the action, it's being as far away from the action as possible. If EA Sports' slogan is "It's in the game," Fantasy Fantasy Sports' slogan is something like, "It's pretty damn far from the game, because let's face it, 'the game' is just way too intense for people like you."

Coming soon: fantasy video games, fantasy office jobs, fantasy fantasy fantasy baseball, and even combined fantasy leagues. ("All right! Karen from Dallas got promoted to Assistant Director of Marketing, A-Rod hit two homers, AND Kenny from Brooklyn got a new high score in Guitar Hero! Woo hoo, 12 points for me! Eat that! Who's the man?")

They can take our lives, but they can never take our "freedom!"

2008-07-18T12:02:00.000-07:00

I'm not a political man. Exhibit A: Do you currently see me running for President of the United States? No, you do not (contrary to popular belief, I am not Bob Barr). Case in point. However, I do know a couple things about politics, like the fact that we're involved in a controversial war with France right now. Speaking of which, as a true American citizen I feel that it is my duty to weigh in on one major current issue: whether or not we should refer to French fries as "freedom fries." My opinion on this matter is that we should not only replace the "French" in "French fries," but also replace "French" in any other context as well, with "freedom."

You see, rejecting all things French is a great American tradition dating back to the 1700's when the city of "Beau Fleuve" ("beautiful river") in western New York was renamed "Buffalo." The significance of this event cannot be understated. Had this not occurred, neither the city nor the hot wings sauce would be called "buffalo," and consequently the buffalo phenomenon would not be nearly as fascinating as it is. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it would be no more fascinating than the sentence "Police police police police police police police."

Now that we are at war, continuing this tradition is of unquestionable importance. That's why I eat freedom toast with freedom fries and a side of freedom onion soup. This should expand to all phrases and expressions in the English language. Freedom kiss your significant other. Play the freedom horn in the marching band. Admire the basketball skills of Larry Bird, the "hick from Freedom Lick." Come on people, we can do this! Let's stick it to those dirty fucking Freedom-men! (Pardon my freedom.)

Oh, one more thing: you have to admit that George Michael's song "Freedom! '90" would never have been the timeless musical masterpiece that it is if it hadn't been censored due to the war. Watch the video (click link above) and imagine what it would sound like if "French" were substituted for every "freedom" as the artist had originally intended. Mr. Michael, you are a true patriot.

So from now on, I urge you to avoid using the F-word in all cases (the 6-letter F-word I mean; the 4-letter one is fine, especially in reference to the Fr**ch). Keep fighting the good fight and I guarantee you we will prevail. I mean it's not like the French have ever WON a war!

The LHC might not kill us after all!

2008-07-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

Good news! After crunching the numbers again, it ends up that the probability of us all being killed by the Large Hadron Collider is less than I originally thought! There are a few more very possible scenarios that you need to be aware of:

1) The It's It Scenario
The LHC creates a wormhole, through which beings from the future send back a new and improved It's It bar. It is found to be extremely delicious.

2) The Buffalet Scenario
Similar to the strangelet (strange matter) scenario, except in this case a particle is produced that has crazy quantum properties that allow for the possibility of a non-run-on sentence consisting of only the word "buffalo" 50 times in a row. This "buffalet" particle starts a chain reaction that converts all particles in the solar system to buffalet particles. The buffalo phenomenon becomes even more awe-inspiring and the world is a better place as a result.

3) The Stranger Scenario
Also similar to the strangelet scenario. Basically what happens is that the LHC produces something amazing that unlocks the secret to the universe. The physicist running the machine at the time is so excited about this finding that he bursts into a nearby office unannounced...and walks in on his colleague giving himself the stranger. This moment is so awkward that it causes a wave of awkwardness that sweeps across the planet. We don't die, but things are extremely awkward for the next 100 years or so until the awkwardness evaporates.

4) The Bad False Vacuum Scenario
Ok, this one sort of blows. Some scientists think that we may be living in a "false vacuum" and that a "true vacuum" with lower potential energy exists. The energy of the collisions produced by this particle collider may be enough to overcome the barrier needed to knock us into the "true vacuum" state. A bubble of this new vacuum state expands through the universe at near-light speed, killing everything in its path, including all of us and all other lifeforms in the universe, except maybe cockroaches. Whoops. Sorry, aliens - our bad.

5) The Good False Vacuum Scenario
A bubble of superior vacuum cleaners (probably the Oreck XL21 Titanium Series) sweeps through the entire universe, replacing all the crappy vacuums in its path. Aliens from far-away galaxies thank us for making their floors cleaner than they ever imagined possible.

So if you're keeping score at home, the odds of us all being killed by this thing are now estimated to be only 6 out of 11, or about 54.5%. Still not great, but the fact remains that doing these experiments is inevitable because it is natural human instinct to want to smash stuff into each other and see what happens (hey, that's how you were born!). My advice to you is to not sweat the small stuff, like whether or not you're about to be painfully spaghettified by a black hole or blown to pieces by an expanding vacuum bubble of doom. There are a lot more important things to worry about, such as the relationship status of these two "celebrities" that nobody has ever heard of. Party on, Wayne.

*Thanks to Jon Frank for the original ideas for scenarios #1 and 3.

Belgians waffle on beer buyout

2008-07-14T20:15:00.000-07:00

Anheuser-Busch? Why it's fine, thank you, I just trimmed it yesterday! How's yours? (Relax, I'm talking about shrubbery, sicko.)

First it was going to happen, then it wasn't, now it looks like it's happening for real. If you haven't heard yet, Anheuser-Busch is selling out to Belgian beer conglomerate InBev. People who pretend to like beer (but secretly prefer fruity wine coolers) all over America are upset that their favorite "beer" is no longer USA-owned and operated. In case you don't know, Anheuser-Busch is the company that produces a variety of popular beverages, including a rice drink called "Budweiser," a bottled water called "Bud Light," and a fermented horse urine drink called "Natural (Natty) Ice."

Taking the high road with my jokes once again:

The fact is that people in other countries (particularly the British) think that American beer sucks. The other fact is that it DOES suck, that is at least the beer produced by the "big three" (Bud, Miller, and Coors, who all now conveniently happen to be foreign-owned). To make matters worse, the British have also been occasionally known to refer to Americans as "Merkins," a term which is also used to refer to...um...this.

The British LOVE to make the following hilarious joke:
Q: How is American beer like sex in a canoe?
A: It's f***ing close to water!!!

Ok, I'll wait 10 minutes for you to stop laughing hysterically...
...
...
Seriously, did you expect better from people who think "blimey" is a normal word?

Well it's time to prove the naysayers wrong and stand up for our great nation and its many righteous brews. For those of you who think Budweiser was a symbol of America and feel that our national pride has been wounded by this buyout, here is my advice to you: shut up. It's time to leave "Buttweiser" (zing!) to the waffle boys in Europe and crown a new American king of beers. Let's show them our nation isn't about cheap, watery rice drinks, we're about strong, thick, and flavorful beers with enough alcohol to tranquilize a hippo. I suggest we crown Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA or Three Floyds Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout as the new king.

And while we're talking about beer, was "Beerfest" a cinematic masterpiece or what? Most ridiculous Academy Awards snub since "Dumb and Dumber" got shut out in 1994.

A journey into the mind of the Buffalo Master

2008-07-14T07:30:00.000-07:00

There are some tough jobs out there. Human shield, celebrity blogger, professional Russian roulette player, buffalo buffaloer, and so on. But there is one man above all who works his ass off day in and day out to protect the integrity of a sacred piece of scripture, receiving little recognition or thanks for his toils. As you've probably guessed, that man is the Buffalo Master.

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the last 500 years and do not know who the Buffalo Master is, I will provide you with a short bio. Ever since the discovery of the sentence "Buffalo buffalo buffalo." in 1503 A.D. (as in buffalo (the animal) buffalo (the verb) buffalo (the animal)), a document outlining the wonders of the buffalo phenomenon has been stored in a safe place to protect it from the many people who wish to vandalize, corrupt, or destroy it. For many centuries that place was the deepest, darkest dungeon of a castle with stone walls 200 feet high and 50 feet thick, surrounded by a moat of hungry alligators and sharks. Anyone who made it into the castle would be greeted with a pit of poisonous snakes and a series of traps that were inspired by the movie "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." In 2005, the sacred text was relocated from the depths of the castle dungeon to this Wikipedia page. Through the centuries, one man has been entrusted with the great responsibility of guarding this text. That man is the Buffalo Master.

Artist's rendering of Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Castle:
Additional "buffaloes" have been added to the sentence from time to time, but for the last 53 years, the sentence has stood at 8 "buffaloes." The current Buffalo Master strongly opposes the addition of any more words to the sentence, which many believe is a result of this one time when he considered adding a ninth "buffalo" (the hot wings sauce) at the suggestion of a guy named Lenny O'Connor from Cincinnati. The Buffalo Master contemplated this proposition long and hard, and was about to make the necessary amendment until he discovered at the last minute that Mr. O'Connor's intentions were not pure and the only reason he wanted to add the extra "buffalo" was to promote a new wings appetizer at the local Applebee's restaurant where he worked as an assistant manager. The Buffalo Master was greatly troubled by this incident and subsequently officially declared, "The hot wings sauce shall not be considered a valid use of the word 'buffalo.'"

Ok, I think that's enough background - now onto the story of the current Buffalo Master...
The current Buffalo Master (who shall remain nameless) took on the prestigious position in 1998 when his predecessor stopped giving a shit. He is a 33-year-old man who lives with his parents in Erie, Pennsylvania, and in his day job, he works the floor in a referee shirt at Dick's Sporting Goods. He takes his position as the Buffalo Master very seriously, and a special ringtone on his cell phone alerts him instantly whenever anyone attempts to make revisions or additions to the "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" article on Wikipedia. He prides himself on always answering the call within 1 hour of any change to the article. This has caused great inconveniences in his life and has made it very difficult for him to keep a relationship. For example, the following scene actually happened: "Oh yeah! Give it to me, Buffalo Master!" ***Beep, beep, beep!*** "Oh darn it, somebody's trying to change the external links section of the buffalo article again. Sorry honey, I have to go - this can't wait!" However he gets great pride in knowing that the text will be safe from sabotage as long as it is under his watch.

Typical scene from the Buffalo Master's workstation:
So in conclusion, it is a thankless job but someone has to do it. Here's to you, Buffalo Master. Keep up the good work...and stop deleting the link to this blog, douche!

Fame don't buffalo me

2008-07-12T19:42:00.000-07:00

Now that "Buffalo This" is another wayward piece of crap floating around in the almighty blogosphere, the real challenge to this business has become evident: getting people to give a shit about your blog. I started this thing with the very reasonable and practical goal of getting 1 million regular readers by the end of July 2008. I'm not going to rule anything out yet, but as of now making that goal does not look very likely. As far as I know, nobody has commented on my posts (Can't I even get some obnoxious idiot to write "FIRST!!!" on one of the comment boards? Come on!), and at last count I have one regular reader - myself - and maybe some irregular readers - people that have stumbled upon this blog from a Google search or the link to my blog on Wikipedia's Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo page that some Big Brotheresque censorship-happy douchebag keeps deleting. Once I start spreading news of this blog to friends and family by word of mouth, maybe I'll get a few more readers. But it's a long way to 1 million.

On a different note, being a celebrity has not been nearly as tough as I expected it to be. (Note to the staff of "Us Weekly": I am NOT having an affair with Scarlett Johansson or Jessica Alba. We are just friends, seriously!) I really don't get why the stars complain so much. Of course it is a little annoying having to avoid doing things like going to the club without underwear or keeping questionable photos on my cell phone. It could just be that this is so easy for me because I am not the type to be easily buffaloed by the paparazzi - maybe some of the other celebs out there who aren't as tough as I am let the 'razzi get into their dome piece more than I do. Being a celebrity does have its perks however. Being super-loaded and having millions of people who idolize you are great, but nothing is as satisfying as being able to say to yourself in the mirror every morning, "Lookin' good there chief (I call myself 'chief' a lot). People worship you. You are the f***ing man!!!" Until you're famous you have no idea how great that is. A lyric from David Bowie's song "Fame" comes closest to describing the feeling: "Fame!" That should give you a pretty clear picture of what it's like.

Let's get to 1 million! Or at least 10! Come on, anyone?

Kids these days...

2008-07-11T20:07:00.000-07:00

There comes a day for each of us when we realize we're no longer spring chickens and that we should just throw in the towel and start going to bridge club and watching "Welcome Back, Kotter" reruns all day. The big sign for me was not someone pointing out my excessive use of the phrase, "Eh, sonny? Eh?" or loss of bowel control, but a more nebulous combination of things such as only recognizing 2 or 3 songs on the Billboard pop chart, no longer being able to make much solid contact at the 85mph batting cage, being ridiculed about my age at a college beirut tournament, identifying with Toby Keith's song "As Good as I Once Was," and not getting what the hell this "Hannah Montana" craze is all about. Yes, at the ripe old age of 25 I finally understand the difficulties of the senior life.

So for one time and only one time, I'm going to stoop to the level of far inferior and less popular blogosphere member Perez Hilton and look at what kids these days are up to, from an old fart's perspective.

"Bobby, that woman is the devil!"

Who in tarnation is this floozy Amy Winehouse supposed to be? I guess she had one big song or something. Is it really that easy to be a huge celebrity these days that this dirty British tore up from the floor up crack whore can do it? I mean it's not like she writes a hilarious blog or anything. What's the big deal?

Soap opera stars and cheesy 80's pop singers invade baseball

So the balloting for the final two players to make the 2008 Major League Baseball All-Star game is finished, and the winners are: Evan Longoria, star of "Desperate Housewives," and Corey Hart, best known for his 1984 single "Sunglasses at Night." What is this world coming to where our national pastime has been corrupted by celebrities with little or no baseball talent? Hell, Amy Winehouse would probably be on the Kansas City Royals' roster if she didn't violate the league's substance abuse policy. Heavens to Betsy!

Disney gone wild

Back in my day, the big Disney Channel stars were cartoon mice and the like. Now the star of some "High School Musical" show that young'uns supposedly consider to be the cat's pajamas gets caught sending pornographic images of herself to her ambiguously gay co-star/boyfriend. Well I never! Isn't there any sense of decency in the world anymore? I want my kids watching Sesame Street, not common street trash!

Kids these days, I tell you, I could go on forever with war stories from my time in 'Nam or valuable "when I was your age" anecdotes, but unfortunately I just crapped my pants. Oops.

Bummed about the LHC? Try some THC.

2008-07-10T20:58:00.000-07:00

Now that we've covered the extremely fascinating buffalo phenomenon in some detail, I would now like to move on to a somewhat less important issue that I consider to be a slight bummer: there's a chance that this machine CERN is building in Europe is going to cause the entire planet to get sucked into a black hole, or something like that.

I'm talking of course about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The point of this thing is to determine what shit is made of by slamming together large hadrons, which are one of the main basic components of shit, at near light speed. (Clarification: by "shit" I mean stuff in general, not actual fecal matter, although fecal matter is indeed one of the countless types of shit out there.) Hadrons are sub-atomic particles, protons in this case. As for the "large" part, that beats me because something that's smaller than a hydrogen atom seems pretty damn un-large to me. Maybe the next time a girl expresses dissatisfaction with the dimensions of your junk, you can use the LHC to convince her that the item in question is in fact fairly large ("At least it's not subatomic!"). One of the big ticket items they're looking for is the "elusive" Higgs boson, a goofy-ass sounding particle that many scientists theorize gives mass to certain things, including EVERYTHING IN THE F***ING UNIVERSE. If it really is true that we're all nothing more than big walking piles of Higgs bosons, then getting sucked into a black hole may not be such a terrible fate after all. I could not imagine a more depressing revelation.

So when they fire this thing up and start testing, probably sometime between August and October 2008, one of six things is going to happen:

1) A micro black hole is created and it swallows the planet, killing us all.
2) A stable form of strange matter is created and converts the entire solar system into strange matter, killing all of us in the process.
3) A wormhole is created, which may serve as a portal for beings from the future to send something back through time, possibly to kill us all. The wormhole would be microscopic, so the thing they'd send back through it would probably be more like a self-replicating killer nanorobot and less like Arnold Schwarzenegger.

4) Something else crazy happens, killing us all.

5) Nothing happens, so they build a bigger atom-smasher, which kills us all.

6) We find out what shit is made of and unlock a few more of the great secrets of the universe. We live to fight another day.

So out of six possible outcomes, only one leads to an outcome that doesn't involve us all being killed. It doesn't meet Meatloaf's standards (which would be 4 out of 6 in this case), but apparently the scientists at CERN don't consider an 83.3(repeating)% chance of the planet being destroyed enough of a threat to stop them from firing this bad boy up for the off-chance that they might be lucky enough to see a couple of Higgs bosons, the Boson Red Sox, or Boson the clown. Furthermore, something you might find particularly disturbing is the fact that most experts out there believe that micro black holes WILL be created by this thing, but believe that they pose no threat to us because they'll instantly evaporate via Hawking radiation. This theory comes from this one time at band camp when Stephen Hawking left a cup full of black holes on the table and came back a couple of days later only to find that the black holes had vanished into thin air. That story should put your fears to rest - if the black holes evaporated last time then there is no reason to doubt that they will evaporate again.

So we could be on the brink of the end of humanity, which you have to admit would sort of suck. In fact, I would go so far as to rate its bummification potential somewhere between that of the Steelers failing to make the playoffs and DICKipedia refusing to recognize my brilliant contributions to the science of creating a sentence solely out of the word "buffalo." Unfortunately there is nothing we can do about it either, so it seems the best thing to do is accept our fate and blaze up a fat blunt while we're waiting for the black hole or nano-Schwarzenegger from the future to put the ultimate smackdown on all of us.

More buffalo than you can handle

2008-07-09T17:33:00.000-07:00

Ok, now that that's out of my system and I've come to grips with my newfound status on the A-list, the time has come to discuss an important issue: buffalo. Fifteen of them to be precise.

Buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo. And do they ever.

For those who are not aware that this is a grammatically correct sentence, allow me to enlighten you. The word "buffalo" is a magical one that has four meanings:
1) (noun) A large, hairy bovine mammal.
2) (noun) A city in western New York state.
3) (noun) A type of hot wing sauce (or (adj) anything covered in this sauce).
4) (verb) To bully or intimidate.

The order of these words in the sentence above is as follows: 3 2 1 3 2 1 4 4 3 2 1 3 2 1 4. If you still don't get it, let's replace (1) with "bison," (2) with "Rochester," (3) with "saucy," and (4) with "bully." Let's also throw in the optional word "that" a few times. Then the sentence becomes:
Saucy Rochester bison that saucy Rochester bison bully (in turn) bully (other) saucy Rochester bison that saucy Rochester bison bully.

So now it should make sense. If it still doesn't, I recommend that you go back and repeat the second grade, and while you're at it, go ahead and make a movie about it because "Billy Madison" was hilarious and could really use a sequel.

The reason the "buffalo phenomenon" is near and dear to my heart is because a friend and I were the ones who added the hot wing sauce and the fourth "buffalo Buffalo buffalo" clause to it, expanding the total number of words in the sentence from 8 to 15 (notice Wikipedia still only recognizes 8 however). This is the reason that if I am struck down tomorrow by a meteor or tsunami or the like, I can die satisfied that I have made a great contribution to science that might even earn me a posthumous Nobel prize.

Now you're probably saying to yourself, "Wait a minute. That could never happen." Once again, you would be terribly mistaken. You only need to find 8 buffalo (2 for each of the 4 "buffalo Buffalo buffalo" clauses to make each one plural), transport them to Buffalo, cover them all in hot wing sauce, then manipulate two groups of two to buffalo the other two respective groups of two, and later manipulate one of the two groups that were originally buffaloed to buffalo the other previously buffaloed group. It's that simple!

In case you still have questions, here are some FAQ and my answers:
Q: "Don't you need punctuation or the word 'that' somewhere in there?"
A: "No. Who's the expert here - me or you? That's what I thought."

Q: "There never were any buffalo in Buffalo. They are actually called 'bison.'"
A: "If you would be so kind, please fuck off. They're called 'buffalo,' you gigantic nerd. This is America - if you don't like it then you can get the hell out!"

Q: "Couldn't you add more buffaloes and still have a grammatically correct sentence?"
A: "Technically yes, but then it would be a run-on sentence and would just start to sound silly. Try going around saying 'buffalo' more than 15 times in a row and see if they don't throw you in the loony bin."

I'm famous!

2008-07-08T19:25:00.000-07:00

All right!!! I am finally posting stuff on the Internet that everyone in the world is going to read! Yeah, dude! I'm famous!!! I'm famous!!!
I'M FAMOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!